City Commission - Regular Meeting

These monitors are up.

Oh, the monitor, oh.

Oh, Shawn, Lilliput's. Maybe it's on, wait, it has power. Good afternoon. I'd like to call to order a special city commission budget workshop. Today is August 5th, 2026. The time is 1 18 PM. Could I have a roll call please?

Mayor Cooper. Present. Vice mayor Lazarus running late. Commissioner Adams.

Here.

Commissioner Butler.

Here.

Commissioner Lima-Tobbs running late. City manager Dr. Earl. City Attorney Marina. Present. Madam Mayor, you have a quorum.

Thank you, Madam Clerk. Before we rise for the Pledge of Allegiance, without going too personal, I want to conduct a moment of silent prayer, as I've done customarily, for the war in Israel, as well as Iran and the Middle East and those in Ukraine. We call to mind all the people that are lost, our soldiers that are in harm's way, protecting those in harm's way, as well as around the globe. We also call to mind our first responders here at home in our county, state, and nation that defend our cities and states on a daily basis. A moment of silent prayer and a special prayer out to those that have lost loved ones here in our organization. A moment of silent prayer. Thank you. Please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance.

Commissioner Butler.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Great.

We will jump right in it since we are getting a little behind schedule. Dr. Earl, as I started out last budget workshop, I want to thank all our directors, our staff, particularly our budget team, and all the hard work that they've been doing in light of kind of the struggles and the stresses that we're looking Two, with the threat of the erosion of our home rule, the threat of reduction property taxes. So we are all here, and I'm very proud of the city and how stable we have become. And I want to thank you publicly again for that, Dr. Earl. So I will turn it over to you.

Thank you very much, Madam Mayor and commissioners. So we are here at another one of our budget meetings. I think this is the third one that we've had. We have some additional ones coming up. Today we have three presentations for you. We have a presentation on the cemetery. We have a presentation... on the commission annual action plan. That was where the commission had indicated that they would begin to take a look at the projects and potentially reduce the list of projects on that list as well. And then we have a presentation from DSD on the building fund. So I believe we are ready to start with the cemetery presentation. So with that, I will ask our new, and I will introduce her, our new Assistant Director of Public Works, Madame Caroline McHenry. You wanna introduce yourself to the members of the commission, Caroline, and then we can go into the presentation.

Yes, sure. Good afternoon, Mayor, Commission, City Manager's Office, the City Attorney's Office, and Madam Clerk. My name is Carleen McHenry. I am your new Assistant Director of Public Works. It is with great pleasure that I get an opportunity to work with a phenomenal team. I am looking forward to this journey. I have a background in operational excellence. I am a Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt, where I kind of... Congratulations on that. Process improvements, look at cross-functional efforts collaboratively across the board, and really just streamline our approach on how we meet our key deliverables, which is meeting our residents' needs. So it is a pleasure for me to join this team, and I'm excited. Thank you very much.

Congratulations. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Carolyn. So the cemetery presentation, commissioners, so as you know, we've worked over the years to try and refine Well, ready to stem the losses that we had at the cemetery that we discovered when we did our analysis of the cemetery back in 2020, 21. So we've made significant strides in that time. There's a lot of work that we have left to do. And so this presentation is going to bring you up to speed on a lot of different things. So please ask questions. And then we will have a follow up presentation on the 19th meeting as well, which will come back with fees and some additional numbers for you. So this presentation is going to be a lot more informational. And again, feel free to ask questions. So Carolyn.

Thank you, sir. So today, it's my pleasure to bring the commission up to date with the background. I'm going to talk a little bit about the background of the cemetery, just to kind of level set. And then we're going to talk about the operating budget, as we've seen in prior years and what we're seeing today, some trends that we're seeing and what it suggests. We're also gonna talk about some challenges that we've identified and some challenges that we have already been working on in Public Works and by we, obviously I'm new to the team, but it is we. So I take great pride in joining the team and completing some of the challenges and opportunities that they outlined before. And we're gonna talk about some next steps, some opportunities that we would like to embark on in the near future as it relates to some of the challenges that we've seen. So just a background about the city cemetery. It's about nine acres. We currently have about recorded records of somewhere around 6,500 burial records. It serves both as active cemetery and a monumental historic site for the city. It's about 100 years old. It's a final resting place for some of our pioneers. Earliest record that we have, the city has, is dated way back in 1904. It's a historic section which includes grave markers for Spanish-American war veterans, and many of those individuals buried in the older section of cemeteries dates way back in the 1800s. It preserves the history and culture for this city for future generations as well. Some key challenges that we've identified and public works have identified in the past, including in recent discoveries, is we are experiencing a decline in availability of space in the cemetery. I think you've heard that before. So we're gauging and really deep diving into with some level of accuracy what that means. We know we're somewhere at around the 20 percent capacity. We are working on some improvement projects to continuously fine-tune what that number looks like. This accelerated rate has been recent where we're seeing almost 50 percent incline in lot cells. We're going to talk about that a little bit in terms of what's attributing to that predominant increase in sales. Rates, Hollandale Beach Brewery rates are pretty much not aligned with our Broward County Municipal Cemetery partners. So the team had done some preliminary benchmarking. We've updated those numbers as recently in the last 24 hours. And so we are pretty confident that our current rates are significantly lower than our municipal partners that are in our surrounding areas. Oh, it's not clicking. Now it's moving on.

Thank you.

My apologies. Records, maintenance funding, so as we talk about maintenance of ground works, capital projects in terms of expansion, maintaining the markers, all of the funds necessary to really maintain the integrity of the cemetery and perpetual care, we're finding that there were some insufficiency in funds at some period in time, and over time, due to the increase in lot sales, that some of the revenue numbers kind of switched a little bit, where we're seeing that while it could be self-supported, that's important to note that it's at this current level of service, right? So as we want to improve service in the cemetery, it will require that we monitor and we do appropriate analysis to really understand what is the recovery rate. for a level of service inside of the cemetery. Limiting staffing, while currently we've experienced this 50% growth in terms of volume of purchases, it's important to note that we do have one position that we are working to fill. And so this could suggest some additional need for some additional staffing, but we are evaluating the growth that we've experienced against some ordinance changes and in comparison, to where we are with our briar counters that could be indicative as to why we're seeing so much cells, and we're going to that in a few minutes as well. We are seeing a lot of speeding. We are looking at a project right now to replace our fence. Predominantly, we've had major incidental situations where cars have actually driven right into our fencings. And that's about a 300K repair job. So there are specific safety risks with speeders entering the cemetery itself and in the surrounding vicinity of the cemetery.

So that's an issue that we have our eyes on as well in terms of challenges.

And then obviously we know we're dealing with some flooding situation. There are isolated flooding situations that affect the integrity of where the markers are over time due to settlement and stuff like that. So we want to make sure we look at that as well. At a glance, when we look at operating revenues against expenditures, there was a prior cemetery presentation that provided some high level numbers for fiscal year 23. I'd just like to just kind of point out the disclosure here that in fiscal year 23, as previously reported, the department had reported 644,990. I just wanted to call out that that number that was reported in the prior presentation includes funds from the general fund, about 390,000 general fund subsidy. So this chart, what it's designed to do is to help at a glance look at revenue versus our expenditures. If you zoom in on the orange line, which is predominantly what we're talking about right now, as we talk about how much general fund subsidized the operation in latter years. Close to the fiscal year 24, 25, you kind of see that crossover occur. And that crossover kind of suggests where at the current level of service, without improving service, obviously, the general fund subsidy, the requirement was minimal. Not to say that we didn't have capital projects, as we talked about, replacement of markers, but the need for the basic level of service operation. We saw a different level of service there. So that's pretty much what that slide suggests. The question remains now, what caused the 50% increase in revenue? So due to data stratification, we dug a little bit deeper in the data, and the next chart just kind of shows what we found. We found the increase was predominantly due to non-residential lot sales. And that was a very important point because we first found the rates were not comparable to our Broward County municipal partners. But then we also found that we have a predominant number of sales that are attributed to non-residential sales. So there was a pretty close correlation there in those two variables, which is why as manager indicated, we will be coming in the next commission meeting to discuss maybe a short-term stop the bleeding solution on where our rates really need to be. In light of recent events, property values, land values have increased predominantly. I think our municipal partners have done their due diligence and appropriately raising their rates. And so we would like to do the same. It is important to also note the Department of Public Works will be moving forward effectively with an effective rate study as well. So this introduction of the rates will help stop the bleeding, and then we will be doing a rate study for appropriate rate recoveries.

Hi. It's okay. Okay.

Yeah, curling.

What is it? Curling. Like curly with an N. My memory is not good.

Welcome to the city. I'm just gonna, I'm gonna say hello and ask you 20 times. Did you say property values went up?

So land values have gone up in the prior years.

Oh, prior years, but not this year. Okay, yeah, we know that.

Yeah, not this year, no. So as we've seen, the $200,000 homes are no longer 200,000. So the land value has significantly gone up in South Florida And so a lot of the other municipalities have aligned their numbers, right? We're selling lot.

No, I know, but we had a big discussion about this, but we were talking more about residential and not commercial and not lots and stuff like that. But I was just curious if you said that, but you said over the years, that's different. Yes, ma'am. Yes. Thank you.

So for the, you're welcome, you're welcome. So for the expenditure and revenue, we went back to 2023. Some additional opportunities we talked about was improving our policies and procedures and even our ordinance to help govern the operations in the cemetery. So this afternoon during our commission meeting, we are introducing some recommendations for ordinance languages. We've worked collaboratively as a team to really look at how we're doing business. And I just would like to kind of hover over, discuss just a few of those things. We talked about the cemetery rate adjustments critically needed right now as we're seeing very, very high demand as a result of our rates where they are today. Installment payments over term, possibly extending those from 12 to 18 months. Down payment requirements for plots increased from 10% to 20%. Install payments remains unpaid for about 30 days after due date. Installment agreements should potentially be considered for cancellation. We have a large number of reservations where folks are just not coming to complete those payments. Certificate of entitlement, have a certificate of right or a deed required for proof of ownership for internment. Abandonment policies with unused burial spaces. So if there's no current address on the record for 50 consecutive years, post-purchase reverts back to us. After 120 days of notice, potentially run this twice in magazines and news outlets in consecutive week periods, the city has the right to sell. Basically, it's abandonment policies in our ordinance. And our niche is to set a threshold of maximum of two cremations per interment and no sale of grave spaces. Only the city can sell those. Some additionals are limitations and liability clauses that our attorney really helped us with. The city is not liable for damages from opening and closing of the burial site, permit required during the intermittent, required by medical examiner and responsibility, and moving deceased will occur and administrative costs. We didn't have those things in our ordinance and we would like to include those things. Mm-hmm. As we mentioned, we are close to 80% capacity, and a lot of things can change those numbers. There's so many moving variables. There's different sizes of lots. There's oversized lot, smaller lots. Children lots are much smaller in capacity, so as you can imagine, whether a person decides to purchase niche as opposed to land lot burials, all of these variables can affect your capacity. So that 80 percent could possibly look more like 90 percent if predominantly the majority of your burials are oversized lots. So we say 80 percent and we want to make sure that we understand that there's a lot of variables that can affect that number. With that said, the team has been looking at different options in terms of capacity, if it's the will of the commission, the city manager's office to keep this historic site for years and years to come for our residents. Ma- No, oversized lots are basically larger than your standard lots. And it's for oversized individuals, so it's an oversized lot. That's really what it is.

How big are they?

We have different size, yes.

We charge more for it. We have different size, yes, in our fee structures. But I don't understand when you say that we're at 80% capacity, it depends on whether they need an oversized lot or not. So you're saying we have 10 oversized lots or 12 regular sized lots for you?

Right. So we can't really control how many oversized lot we're going to sell. And so the oversized lot can change your plan in terms of your land space usage, right? Yeah.

I just never heard of oversized lot because I figured they were all. I have an idea.

Larger. It's basically larger.

Put a weight restriction on anybody we're taking in.

oh my gosh it's just i'm sorry to interrupt the train of thought but i had never heard an oversized lot and i was presuming it was like if a spouse spouses come in and buy a double lot all right plot not a lot go ahead thanks um so as we talk about those things it gets us closer to our threshold if we continue um at the con at the uh lot purchase rate that we're seeing um and nothing changed

we're looking somewhere around eight years, nine years, 10 years marker, if we do not change anything. And that's with some level of, we still need to vet this data out and we are exercising and we are doing those things right now to really do some work on getting the records straight with some level of confidence. The addition of a mausoleum could potentially expand our capacity about 300 to 800. to sell more, have available spaces for burials. And so we are right now undergoing that planning exercise to see what that cost factor would look like, how soon will we have to really crunch on construction of that mausoleum. It's important to note that the construction of the mausoleum will occupy the space that we are saying will take us out eight to nine years. So if we stop burials activities on that space, it means that nine years now becomes three years. So it's very important for us to note that the construction timeline reduces the availability of land space and so that nine years now looks like two to three years, okay? So I just wanted to make sure that we were clear on what that looks like for the capacity. So to be great news, we have more capacity, we can keep going, it just means we have to immediately begin planning for the construction of a mausoleum. FROM A RECORDS MANAGEMENT PERSPECTIVE, WE HAVE DONE SOME DIGGING AND SOME STUDYING AND WE'VE DONE THAT OVER THE PAST COUPLE OF WEEKS. WE ARE PRETTY CONFIDENT THAT WE HAVE TO DO SOME RECORD CLEANING AND WHAT THAT MEANS, CONSOLIDATION OF RECORDS. WE HAVE DATA RECORDS THAT ARE IN DIFFERENT REPOSITORY AND DIFFERENT DATABASES. Some are in card stocks, some are in a plan, written plan. This is a cemetery dating back in 1800s. There's human error also that can occur when we're manually transferring information. We also would like to incorporate some process improvement where we are marrying all of the data into just one GIS record. While there is a GIS SIMS, some of the information are in there, some are not. We also have found that over time there was a naming convention change that occurred. So the standard naming convention in the 1800s and what we know it today is drastically different. So what we call block one currently today there are individuals buried in there. where cards are referencing it as block two, but it is actually block one. So there is some cleanup that needs to occur. And so we are diligently working on that. We are working with our procurement partners for specialized services, and we believe we will get there relatively quickly. We will come back to the commission with a schedule in terms of what that would look like, but we are working diligently on that. As of next steps we would really like to encourage the commission to approve the resolution to adopt new rates during the August 19th meeting. As the manager indicated we will come forth with what those numbers look like to at least stop the bleeding. AS WE MOVE FORWARD WITH THE LONG-TERM RATE STUDY. CEMETERY DATA MODERNIZATION AND GOVERNANCE INITIATIVES CRITICALLY IMPORTANT. OUR RECORDS ARE VERY, VERY IMPORTANT. AND SO WE WILL BE WORKING WITH CITY CLERK AS WE TALK ABOUT DIFFERENT DATA REPOSITORIES THAT INCLUDES DEEDS, THAT INCLUDES CITY RECORDS. WE HAVE NO IDEA HOW MUCH OF THOSE RECORDS ARE NOT INCLUSIVE. AND SO THIS IS A COMPLETE CONSOLIDATION OF ALL OUR DATA RECORDS INTO ONE SINGLE DATABASE. So it will include an entire cemetery team to do that. Capacity expansion we just talked about. We've already started the planning exercise for the mausoleum. And we have future meetings coming up with our city manager. And I'm sure our city manager will keep you up to date in terms of what that looks like in terms of a full-on schedule when we get to the detailed perspective of that. Traffic calming measures. It's something down the pipeline that we are looking to do. We do have some heavy speeding. Actually, I almost got hit. So cars are entering. We do have some low-hanging fruit solutions we could put in there, like temporary speed humps. We can put arms at the entryways. to kind of monitor one vehicle at a time as opposed to folks just running through there. So we will be implementing those in fiscal year 27 in our budget. Those are low-hanging fruit, low-cost solutions to kind of help slow traffic down. But we will move appropriately, effectively on traffic calming measures for that area. And of course, we will do some study in that area for the drainage issues. At this time, that is all that I have. Is there any questions?

I have a few. Yes. After being, you know, I know, sadly, where my parents were buried, they actually stack graves. And I'm not saying on top, like above ground, but they actually, if, you know, they allow the spouse to be on top and buried on top. the grave is that can you do that here I mean that was up north I don't even know what's permitted and then the next question obviously is and I know many of us have traveled a lot of communities actually put you know elevate the graves into vaults so does anybody like it sounds so bizarre but I don't know what the regulations are here to do something like that, to expand capacity. And make more money, whatever.

So we do have a block, and we do have our cemetery manager here, so correct me if I'm wrong, please. We do have a block that has that. So you can... Correct. However, in recent years, and I don't know how far back, they've pre-installed the vaults to increase how much... how many burial plots you fit in a square land area, if that makes sense. So before, there's so much spacing and so you were losing your capacity, basically. And so what they've done is they've kind of pre-put those vaults in there so that they just open, put the bodies in there, and then they close it. So what that necessarily means is can that be reviewed to go double? Got to remove those vaults potentially, maybe. But they're not set today to do that. There is block, your old block one, that actually has those double-stacked vaults.

I actually got it right.

Thank you. Nice.

And what about the above-ground model? If somebody wants to do a cement vault on top or...

We don't have that, but I'm not sure if that's something we can look into it.

It's kind of morbid discussion, because in the long term, at a certain point when we're at capacity, do cities typically, because you see it happen all around the country, where they are neglected. There's long-term care, but there's never budgeting to take care of it. Is there a possibility to put a trust together for a future... you know, put money side to make sure that the cemetery is perpetually cared for.

We do have a perpetual care. Do we have a trust for that or? We have a perpetual care fund and when someone buys a lot.

Okay, it is there and it's a set aside and we're not utilizing it or taking money out of it.

Carolyn and our team can explain also.

Okay, go ahead. So in our fund balance, we do have a portion of that that is restricted funds specifically for perpetual care, yes. What that balance is, I don't have it with me, I can.

But we've looked at that and we're gonna make sure that it's in place.

We'll share that with you. So what you're talking about, Madam Mayor.

I know that was just like food for thought. I'm not going to talk that much more about it. It's a double vault.

That's what you're talking about.

A public vault?

It's a double vault. The one that you're talking is stacked.

So my parents have it.

The consideration that you have with that is... You can only dig that at certain times of the year because you have groundwater issues. So depending on what happens with groundwaters, if you're in the rainy season, you typically can't buy a lot like that because of the... Because of the water. And so you have to basically plan that outside of the rainy season so they can go down far enough to then place the double vault into the ground. So yes, it's completely, it's normal. You just have to plan for it.

It's just food for thought, because we're worried about capacity. Because frankly, I think we need the mausoleum sooner than later, because a lot of people are shifting to cremation rather than burial.

Commissioner Adams, you're recognized. I just have a couple of questions, and I think you might have even answered them. When someone gets buried, there is a fee, but that does take care of the perpetual care for them?

So when someone gets buried, there's a combination of fees. There's the lot purchase price, which is not part of the perpetual care. We have a perpetual care fee. That's the question, yes. We do have a perpetual specific, and like I said, we are going towards a full rate study to understand if what we're charging for perpetual care is sufficient to meet the business need, right? And we know that CPI increases, our salaries are going up, there's so much. Mowing of lawns, just equipment cost is so much. And so that rate study will help us forecast what that needs to look like.

Okay, the next question is, some of those headstones in the back are over 100 years old. They go back to 1800s, and I think you said you're still working on that, like who they are, because I'm thinking like if it's just like one person, he might not have had no family left. He's there. Who's taking care of his prices and his expenses? Like who does that?

so so the good thing is um those older records actually have really old cool card stocks there's older cool card stocks and then there's this planning document it's like a plan where they hand wrote um the name and they wrote the location it's pretty cool it's it's really old um and something that clerk and i talked about preserving and so this what this exercise does is takes that go back look at our deeds our old record recorded deeds information you know what i mean and kind of really correlate with all of those things to ensure that we're now cleaning house with one record, that we don't have to go to four different records to really zoom in and say, okay, now we're absolutely sure. We're doing that exercise now for each and every one. So it's not to say the record doesn't exist. It just exists in different repositories. And so we really have to vet out all of these repositories and just clean it out into one single one.

Okay, now I know where the niches are. Is that the west side? I'm losing my direction over here. Let me see, hold on.

East or what? Is it west or south?

I know those niches are only for the little ones. When you're going to build the mausoleum, is that going to be for full caskets or for more niches?

I can't say that from a design perspective we're there yet. How many are you thinking? So we have to look at the data and see how much niche we've been selling and how much capacity we have today. So there's, yeah.

Okay, so my question was, because when I was looking in Fort Lauderdale, they went 10 high. Okay, and how wide were you thinking of going?

Yeah, how you design it matters. How you design it matters. Yeah, you can go as much as creating between 300. That's why I gave you that bracket between 300. Based on the space we had, 300 to 800. Okay. Yeah.

Okay, but there's going to be for full caskets?

It could be a hybrid as well. So I don't want to say full casket because we haven't gotten to the design where we look at, I'm kind of like a numbers person. And so looking at how much niche we've sold versus the capacity of niche we have today would play a factor into what portion of that design would be niche versus full body burials, right? So we wouldn't want to do too many niche now if we don't have enough space. So I think looking at the numbers will help us forecast what that dynamic model needs to look like.

So you're looking at a maximum 800 plots?

That's the possibility of the maximum based on the space that we have. But then there's zoning, how high can we go? There's so much that plays a factor in that. How high can we build? And it's also within a residential community. There's a lot of factors there that we will need to consider. Yes, ma'am.

Thank you, I'm done, I'm done, thank you.

There you go. And I know, Dr. Earle, you had your button lit, but Commissioner Butler's next, so you're good. Commissioner Butler, you're recognized.

Thank you, Mayor. So thanks for the presentation. I just really had a statement more than questions. So in the presentation, it doesn't indicate the number of lots sold. It just shows the revenues, but not the number of lots. So it's hard to understand when you say 80%, the number of lots, how many are residents versus non-residents. what my statement is is that I obviously want to prioritize our residents and I would hope that when we come back with this item that our residents are priced under market and non-residents are priced over market so I'm not suggesting that we eliminate non-residents from coming into the cemetery but if they want to they are going to pay a premium over above what the market is right so instead of banning non-residents, I don't even know if that's possible from the cemetery, we set the pricing at a level where in effect it provides the priority to the residents, which may give us more time than the eight to 10 years than what, and it's hard to tell with the numbers without seeing the numbers. And then the other thing too is to make sure that we bundle out we remove out additional enhancements for burial. And I don't know how we price those today, but I would hope that we would price those out separately in a way that allows the residents who buy into it to add additional fees that would help us from a revenue standpoint to ensure that the cemetery has long-term viability for our residents. And that's my statement.

Thank you, Mayor. Yeah, and I don't know. It was probably after we did briefly discuss that, and the discussion was to actually possibly eliminate non-residents. I don't mean to steal Dr. Earl's thunder, or I'm gonna say your name a couple times. Kerland. Kerland, Ms. Kerland. However, Dr. Earl had suggested, and we kind of reached concessions, that we would include outside people, as you have mentioned, but increase that rate. And that's what will be brought back.

Yeah, an easy way always to eliminate without banning outside people is to set the price at a point where you, in effect. That's exactly right.

And you're flooding our gates because it's extremely low right now.

Yeah, and that's, I think obviously we need to move quickly on that. And then hopefully that'll affect, positively impact your eight to 10 years, which might give us more time to do the mausoleum without feeling like we're under pressure.

We're good. Anything else? Any more consensus or any other direction?

There's an item on the agenda tonight. It's an ordinance for the cemetery. What we are going to do is, based on the feedback and discussions that we also had earlier, is we're going to add. So the thing that's missing from the ordinance tonight is to make sure that we include the non-resident and make sure we have that. at a higher fee. So we'll do that between first and second reading.

All right. And the rates. I think we're good. And it was a pleasure meeting you. Thank you. Welcome aboard. Welcome to the team. Okay. Our next agenda will be Department of Sustainable Development. Department of Sustainable Development.

Director Lajoie.

and Mr. Williams.

Good evening, Vanessa Leroy with the Department of Sustainable. Good afternoon. Sustainable Development. So today we have a presentation for you on a cost of service analysis that we've completed for the building division and also for planning and zoning fees. And we'll also get into the context of the building fund, which currently has a surplus. And so we hired a consultant from Barry Dunn. His name is Jesse Mayotte, and he will be presenting for you today, and we'll take questions afterwards. Thank you.

Quick technology check here. Make sure. Honorable Mayor, members of the Commission, Mr. Manager, city leadership, thank you for your time this afternoon.

Good afternoon.

My name is Jesse Myatt. I'm a consulting manager with Barry Dunn, and I've had the pleasure of serving as the project manager, working with department leadership and the broader city team on preparing this cost of service analysis and fee study for the Department of Sustainable Development. We'll go over a couple of the high-level findings here this afternoon, certainly with regards to revenue generation and expenses incurred to deliver services and talk about a few elements of revenue recovery through the lens of what we call cost recovery and how that may play into future decisions based on fee levels and future revenue generation. I just want to give the Commission an overview of essentially the boundaries for these types of analyses. We like to look at a span of anywhere from about six to 10 fiscal years when we do these things. This is looking usually back at three or four closed fiscal years from an accounting perspective to identify and demonstrate levels of service in the revenue generated by way of fees and charges for that service compared to the expense incurred to deliver those services over the same period of time. We do that to establish some historical cost recovery baselines and we'll talk a little bit more about cost recovery and baselines as we move through the presentation here in a moment. That allows us to then assess essentially what we're looking at as far as the current budget year with regards to budgeted versus actuals and start to forecast out where we might expect things to be with regards to cost recovery for the current budget year and fiscal year. And then most importantly, for these types of analyses, we like to develop those forecasts for future fiscal years, which will help make decisions based on revenue generation and future fee levels to cover the desired level of expenses across various services. And we'll get into that a little bit more. Just one thing to note for the Commission is generally we'll go out about three to five years on the forecast. We are doing that for the broader study. Here this afternoon we're focused essentially on the next two fiscal years being 27 and 28 in that there's some unique consequences and circumstances that we want to talk about perhaps addressing over the next couple of fiscal years. SO WE LOOKED AT PLANNING AND ZONING SERVICES ACROSS THE DEPARTMENT AND ESSENTIALLY CATEGORIZING THOSE OUT INDEPENDENTLY AS THOSE ARE GENERAL FUND SERVICES TO REMIND THE COMMISSION THAT ALL REVENUE AND EXPENSE ARE ASSOCIATED WITH THOSE SERVICES ARE ACCOUNTED FOR WITHIN THE CITY'S GENERAL FUND. versus the building permitting and inspection services, which exist in a special revenue fund of sorts. You can think about it as similar to an enterprise fund. Nonetheless, the fund is designed to be self-sustaining and then some, and so we want to assure that that continues, but also state statute sets limits on the maximum amount of fund balance that could be carried within that fund, which we'll get to here in a moment. FIRST, JUST STARTING ON THE PLANNING AND ZONING SIDE OF THINGS WITH REGARDS TO THE GENERAL FUND SERVICES, BACK TO THOSE COST RECOVERY BASELINES THAT WE CALCULATED AND ESTABLISHED, LOOKING AT FISCAL YEARS 23 THROUGH 25, FEES AND CHARGES REVENUE COVERED ABOUT 69% OF THE COST TO PROVIDE SERVICES WITHIN THAT GENERAL FUND ENVIRONMENT. PUTTING THAT INTO CONTEXT IN ONE MOMENT TO GIVE THAT A LITTLE BIT MORE MEANING, AND CERTAINLY WE'LL GET TO SOME DOLLAR VALUES AROUND THIS, AND NOW LOOKING AT WHERE WE'RE EXPECTING THINGS TO FINISH UP WITH FISCAL YEAR 2026 AND PROJECTING OUT TO FISCAL 28, WE EXPECT THAT COST RECOVERY LEVEL TO INCREASE UPWARDS OF ABOUT 111% OF TOTAL COSTS INCURRED. That means that the planning and zoning core services environment is projected to take in slightly more revenue than the cost projected to provide those services. Comparatively speaking, and to give those numbers a little bit of context, we generally see planning and zoning services at the municipal level as a lower cost recovery type environment. Now, there's no right or wrong to cost recovery levels. Those are your levels and those starting lines, if you will, to make some decisions about future revenue generation. But generally, I would give for context the last half dozen or so with some folks here in the state of Florida and across the country. Comparatively speaking, we see that planning and zoning environment down into about the 20 to 40 percent cost recovery level. Again, that's just the nature of providing those services at the municipal level. Generally, services are delivered and perhaps might never move completely to the fee generation stage, things of that nature. There are some other elements that go into that lower cost recovery level. Certainly, we don't usually see upwards of 70 to 80 or even over 100 percent, and so certainly looking at that, we want to take that into consideration about potential fee adjustments in the future, and we'll get to that a little bit more. Coming down to the building permitting and inspection environment, we want to see this environment be at 100% cost recovery by design. Again, back to my comments about the fund being self-sustaining, we want to maintain a sufficient fund balance to ensure business and service continuity because we know the development environment is cyclical and there are good years, there are bad years, and we want some funding opportunities for those bad years. Looking at fiscal year 23 through 25, you can see that the building fund recovered about 179% of cost recovery. That means there was some significant contributions to fund balance and we'll get to some dollars to those percentages in one second, which is in turn playing into why we are seeing an overage with regards to state calculated ceilings. But going out fiscal 26 to 28, we are expecting expenses to outpace revenue generation slightly. And so that will work towards reducing that fund balance, albeit quite slowly. That 92% translates into about a half million dollar revenue shortfall. But that's only, again, one large project away that we don't know about could change those cost recovery levels going forward. Again, to put a dollar value in just a little bit more of a trend for the boundaries of our analysis, we'll just start very briefly with our planning and zoning services, and these are general fund services. You can see going back to fiscal 23, it was about a 60% cost recovery level, and we've trended upwards since. We're expecting a good year from a revenue generation standpoint in the planning and zoning core service area, and we expect things to land at about 110 to 113% cost recovery. We expect that higher level to continue for a number of reasons. Revenue generation is expected to remain at healthy levels, and we are seeing a little bit of a projected decline on the expense side of things, which is pushing that cost recovery level up. Again, one more contextual item for the Commission. Relatively speaking, your planning and zoning service area is a smaller revenue generation and expense environment. We're talking about, you know, anywhere from about $600,000 to $800,000 on the revenue side of things, similarly on the expense side of things. So a larger adjustment there will, you know, move percentages up and down at a greater pace. Something to keep in mind as we start to talk about what we might propose as far as fee adjustments going forward towards the end of the presentation. As we get to the bigger question here this afternoon is looking at the building permitting and inspection environment, we can see that those fiscal years of going back 23, 24, and 25 were good from a cost recovery or revenue generation standpoint in that revenue generated certainly absorbed the cost incurred to provide those services, and there were significant contributions to fund balance. Again, back to my comments on the higher level slide, we are going to see some expense pressures outpace revenue gains in these future fiscal years, both from a macroeconomic perspective and just intentional budget practices. So that will help with the fund balance overage, but certainly probably not in a timeline that the commission would want to start to address things given the amount of the overage. So just before we start to talk about some potential options and what that does as far as options to reduce that fund balance, to remind the Commission, the primary purpose of building permitting fees are intended to recover the reasonable portion to provide services, the cost to provide services. Again, with the notion that the fund needs to be self-sustaining and then some to maintain a fund balance within compliance. When we do see that fund balance exceed state defined ceiling based on the way it's calculated, we have a few options. We can adjust essentially fees downward, implement other mechanisms such as revenue deferral mechanisms or other administrative kind of draw outs for revenue recognition or look for applicable expenditures, things of that nature. Those are all things, those are wonderful things to consider, but they might not get us to the level quick enough.

Excuse me, I'm sorry to interrupt, if you could give me one second. I'm not sure if this point has been expressed yet, and I think it, looking at your slides, it's important for them to understand. I know you know it, but important for you all to understand. The building fund balance applies only to building applications, so the actual construction to comply with the Florida Building Code, right? The statute governs how we can use those funds. The statute also limits how much we can keep. It's gonna be one of my questions. As a fund, yeah.

We're gonna wait till after his presentation.

Right, but you won't understand the rest of them.

Is there a list, can they be listed out?

Yes, there is, he's gonna go through that, and that's why I wanted you to know this at this point, because I'm looking at the rest of them, I'm like, if they don't know that this is statutorily governed, they're not gonna understand why what he's saying is important.

And it's capped at a percentage.

Right, so you can only keep a certain percent in the fund, that's fund balance, And the rest of it, whatever the overage is, you can only get rid of it in very specific limited ways. So he's going to talk about that. None of this is discretionary. We have to get rid of it one of these ways. We have to do something about it one way or another. You guys will have options on timeline, but I just wanted to emphasize that what he's about to discuss is particularly important because it pertains to statutory compliance.

And since you didn't... Sorry, this is going to be a legal question as well, and I just want clarity. Thank you. Code enforcement is also... Separate. Separate, and their revenue is generated by fines and so on and so forth.

Yes, this is only generated through permit applications and fees. And even further, you'll want to distinguish that as he's distinguishing it. Planning is a zoning function, so that's even different. just to boil it down for the public in the most understandable way. When you want to know if you can put a certain business on a certain area and then what that business would look like and how big that building can be, that's all planning and zoning. Now, when you actually go to construct it, Now you're putting in your building application and it has to comply with the building code. That's your building fund. That's what he's going to be talking about. But those are the two types of funds that he's been talking about till now. And now he's going to discuss the overages and our current fund balance in the building fund because this is an actual problem that we do need to address.

Is there a cap? And I'm going to forget. It wouldn't be intergovernmental because it's in our government. Is there a cap on, let's face it, the one way to look at it is Dr. Earl works in this project, you know, touches so many departments and we have cost recovery. is there a cap on this particular fund as far as percentage of cost recovery?

There is theoretically a cap on what can be charged to it because you're only allowed to charge to it those services that are related to it.

Right, but you saw budget, you have billing, you have accounting, so all those services are tied to that. Yes, we have every fund that we have like that model. It's not bound by their model within the municipality's discretion.

Not exactly. Those have to be supported by, so we do studies.

Well, that's cost recovery.

Yeah, we do studies that determine what the administrative overhead of different functions are, and then those are charged to each fund appropriately. So we can't just increase that number outside of what the study said. Yeah, we can't.

All right, I'm sorry for that interruption. That's what I wanted to clarify. Okay, thanks. Sorry.

No problem at all. And sorry for the background. Thank you, Madam Attorney. I certainly appreciate it. And if there's any other background or contextual questions, please feel free to interrupt me. I'm happy to go through that. But let's get right to the heart of the matter here. In talking about the building fund and state-defined ceiling by statute, calculated as it stands today, the fund has a ceiling of about $4.5 million based on the way the state would have us calculate that ceiling for the fund. As it stands about right now, the city is carrying about 10 and a half million dollars in that fund, so you are over about six million dollars, and so it's reaching levels that are starting to warrant a little bit more of probably a concerted effort to reduce things going forward. What we have here, again, there's a lot of numbers up on the screen, I apologize, but are some calculated scenarios based on what we're proposing as a pilot program for a temporary fee discount program. THIS WOULD APPLY TO BUILDING APPLICATION AND PERMITTING FEES GOING FORWARD AT A SET TIME AND EXIST FOR A TEMPORARY PERIOD OF TIME. IF WE WERE LOOKING AT THE VARIOUS SCENARIOS HERE, YOU CAN SEE WE'VE LAID OUT ANYWHERE FROM ABOUT A 10% DISCOUNT UPWARDS OF A 35% percent discount, and then the subsequent impact of fund balance, we can expect a reduction over the next two or three fiscal years of meaningful value. Certainly if we're looking at that middle number two scenario or the most aggressive scenario, which are the 25 and 35 percent discount scenarios, we can expect perhaps a revenue reduction and an impact of fund balance upwards of $3 to $4 million. That would bring our overage down over the next two or three fiscal years to around $2.2 to $3 million and certainly leave a little bit more of a pathway to go. But those upper level discount scenarios would really be required to move the needle should the commission and the city wish to address this over the next couple of fiscal years. Again, as we were alluding to, there are other elements and, you know, applicable legal uses for fund balance that can be considered during the budget development process. Those can hinge on technology and staff training and other applicable uses related to service delivery. And we can talk a little bit more about those as we move through the slides here.

Is there a cap on tech, how much you can put in tech?

is it a percentage of the fund or is it just a fee the fee that there's no cap on on tech spending if it's applicable to the service delivery environment for the building permitting and inspection and it's solely that that fee must be used on text that is correct when we're talking about the building fund yes Absolutely. So we'll ask for feedback with regards to these scenarios about the timeline for reduction and essentially how fast the commission would like to move to attempt to reduce the overage in the fund balance. Just coming back one slide I jumped over, we are proposing what will probably move the needle the most and be the most meaningful as a pilot program for these building permit fee discounts. This is a pilot program that would run for about a 24 month period. And the purpose is to address the unusually high cost recovery that we've been talking about. We want to stress that these discount periods are temporary in that we don't want them to go in perpetuity. And essentially, we even want to take the temperature probably after the first 12 months to ensure it's having its intended effect and be sure that it's not tipped too severe one way or the other and really give it a timeline of about 24 months, at which point the pilot program can be considered for extension or a disillusion based on where revenues and expenses and ultimately fund balance levels are at that period of time. Coming back to some other mechanisms that we have explored before, and these are more administrative in nature and not necessarily related to actual fee levels or reductions, just to give the commission an idea of some other options, we do see occasionally implementations of a revenue deferral framework. And that would be when an individual comes in and pays their permit fees, often all of the revenue is recognized at that point in time in which the fees are paid 100% of the time. And I'm being very simplistic here. But generally, there are inspections that continue to occur for months, maybe even years after all of those permit fees are paid, which services are being delivered for the permit or the project, but the revenue has already been recognized. And so essentially, it's a lump sum recognition. The framework would be under the idea of recognizing just perhaps the amount of effort that's expended at permit issuance, usually around 30 percent of the total fee, and then recognizing that 70 percent over the life of the project, usually when inspections occur or other milestones in the project happen. Again, no right or wrong way to approach these things, and this is more of an administrative accounting function that would be set up internally to serve as this framework. This is useful when we probably don't need to go as fast as you all need to go. This is not an option that gets at the root cause of the problem, which is excessive revenue generation based on FEE LEVELS, BUT CERTAINLY AN OPTION NONETHELESS THAT KIND OF EXISTS OUTSIDE AN ACTUAL FEE DISCOUNT PROGRAM OR ADJUSTMENT JUST FOR THE COMMISSION'S CONSIDERATION. AGAIN, JUST ONE MORE TIME, THERE ARE OTHER ELIGIBLE USES FOR FUNDS. THESE COULD BE TECHNOLOGY IMPROVEMENTS, PROCESS IMPROVEMENTS, STAFF TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT. THEY COULD ALSO LEAD TO CUSTOMER SERVICE IMPROVEMENTS, WHICH COULD BE REVIEW TIMES INCREASING, JUST GENERAL CUSTOMER SERVICE ENHANCEMENTS, INCREASED INSPECTION AVAILABILITY, EVERYTHING RELATED TO SERVICE DELIVERY. And then finally, just to give a sense of actual fee levels of how they compare just to a few of your local neighbors here, with regards to peer comparisons, and these, take with a grain of salt, these are useful up to a certain extent. They are useful to compare the municipal market for similar services, but obviously each agency has its own expenditure framework and priorities and so on that don't go into actual fee levels. Nonetheless, just wanted to highlight to the Commission that Hellandale Beach is generally right in line with, you know, who we consider peers. So it's not as if your fees are exorbitant in any way, shape, or form. It's just the nature of the development that's been going on over the last number of years. And certainly, you know, no red flags as far as being too high or too low, although we, you know, obviously take that with a grain of salt with regards to fee comparisons. And so finally, where we're at here is looking at the planning and zoning services. Again, back to that general fund environment briefly. We don't recommend making any fee adjustments, of course, based on our analysis. What we do recommend is we've been working with department leadership simplify the fee schedule in a few instances and consolidate some things. We expect that that will have a small amount of impact to revenue generation, reducing it slightly, but also making the customer experience a little bit more. So certainly no adjustments upward, but perhaps adjusting those simplification and consolidation metrics to improve the fee schedule delivery and optics of it. Back to the building permitting and inspections. Of course, we have any number of options, one of which we can do nothing and kind of see where the next few years bring us and look at organic just expense increases outpacing revenues. We can consider, you know, administrative fixes that don't get at necessarily the root of the overage problem, like a revenue deferral framework. Or we can come back and consider something like the pilot rate. that we just outlined in looking at anywhere from that 10 to 35% fee discount period for a temporary period, which would certainly impact the fund balance overage. And certainly I just wanna leave that if in fact it was considered for a discount to really have that impact, we probably are looking at about a 25 to 35% fee discount level to make some significant inroads over the next two or three fiscal years, if that's what the commission desires. With that, I'm happy to go back to anything or answer any other questions.

Well, first of all, thank you so much. And I have to start out. All these comments over the past couple days, I have spoken to so many people that interface with your department, and everybody is saying you're doing an excellent job, just so you know, Dr. Earle. You're responsive, you're meeting, so customer care. Thank you for that, because it means a lot. I know for years, the complaints about building and turnaround and customer service, it's night and day to what it was a couple years ago, so thank you for that. I don't know where to begin, but in my mind, everything I heard, in my opinion, I think that it should be more of a hybrid of everything, because it seems like we've been doing, going along fine. We hear a lot of complaints, just for example, from a real generic type of thing with the plan reviews and continued charges for something, multiple plan reviews. To me, maybe that internal process, to me that could be fine-tuned to cut down some of the charges that, particularly residents, like every time somebody's reviewing the plan, and I'm not saying we're not doing it, and it doesn't cost money, but how do you look at that, like, oh, I had a comment, and it's one comment, and now I have to pay another 2,000, you know, whatever the fee is, to do that? Because normally you would think, well, I already paid, this is what I'm going through, this is part of the process. So from a customer standpoint, I think that that would be one thing that I would look at. You said something that 69% of, I guess, the planning division is from the general fund, or is covered by this? 69% is covered by the building department, and the other 30% is general fund, or it's the flip? Because that's what caught my head.

Cost recovery for the planning and zoning, that's 69% of the funds, but it's all the general fund for the planning and zoning. For the building, it's 179, essentially. Right. Okay. Between 23 and 25.

Right. And of course, I'm sure Dr. Earl and everyone will work on figuring out what that looks like as far as from what the standpoint of all the divisions that we touch providing the service. The one thing with those reoccurring, also I'm intrigued, can you go back and say we have huge developments, I hate to call them out, but I know like Seven Square, they're writing checks, if I understand the process, they're gonna get their permit, it's calculated.

they pay that permit fee up front or is it pay as you go i never asked that question and i'm like they're writing a check that and so this is where uh his mention of the deferral program right then so they pay that one permit fee for all of the services for inspection and plan reviews for that project right regardless of when those inspections are concluded even if that's in the next fiscal next year or two correct yeah

Now, this is gonna lead into my next question, because I've been talking about this for quite some time, and I know it's the new age, and I'm prefacing this with just when we start talking about AI, it's not necessarily replacing people, it's making the delivery of services more stringly. So to my mind, I definitely would love to double down on whatever technology, I frequently, frequent in the office, I'm sure my colleagues do as well, Our system isn't ideal, and from what I understand from a tech standpoint, you can't do the add-ons. There are a lot of things, the functions within it, the bandwidth or whatever the realm of the service is, the type that we're using isn't necessarily great, okay? So I don't know, I know Hollywood went through a process and I don't want to compare notes because actually I've had comments already saying that we're better than Hollywood in some cases, so thank you for that as well. To see what we can do to utilize that tech to really bring it up to speed. Like for example, we tried to go, does everybody in the department have iPads? Do we have a backstop of iPads to go out and do the inspections? Do we have... For inspections, yes. Everybody that inspects is assigned an iPad?

Correct.

Everybody?

Yes.

Oh, okay. That's another conversation because I'll talk offline about that because it's contrary to what... Whatever. Maybe their iPad was broken or something. Somebody went out for inspection but they didn't have an iPad. so okay so i'll put it out that so nobody's like hanging like what happened so so you understand what i'm saying like that interface and the internet and and those services to make sure that we get all that technology but even one step further the new scanning technologies new whatever ai that we can put forward to streamline the system if we have this money, maybe it is the time to say, we double down on our tech to get this done and bring in a pilot or bring in, there's so many agencies and I'm not saying you guys aren't doing this. So I'm sure you get called all the time. I mean, you're in, you're in the field. So, you know, what, what is happening in that field? What, can we bring forward that will really help not just us, but our customers moving forward as far as those reviews. So I'd hate to see that money and this money, not that I'm saying people shouldn't be discounted, you shouldn't do the hybrid thing, looking at how many times we charge people for a review, what that actual rate of review is, deferring the payments, like an all-in cafeteria kind of look at the department. But to me, if we can really, with the new versions of technology, do what we did years ago. We used to have HT400 system. And we're like, guess what? We can talk about technology. We can talk about customer service. We can talk about transparency. But if we don't put where our money, where our mouth is, we're not doing it, right? So, okay.

I can't speak on that. So, you know, I meet with the other directors from Broward County, and there isn't a city in Broward County yet that is fully AI. There is one city that has recently recommended, well, we asked for them to give us a demo. But the thing is, the technology isn't here now yet. So we are looking. It's not off the table, but it's not here yet. And we... We know how much it is important to get not only the right technology, but to have it set up the proper way, and we want to make sure that whatever is coming in has the actual capabilities that we need, because we've gone through it with the Energov, which we're using currently. But it's not off the table, but we haven't found something yet that's better than what we have.

And I appreciate and appreciate And then Dr. Rohn, unless you wanted to answer a question.

No? No, I'll wait after Commissioner Rowland.

So thank you, Mayor, and thank you for the presentation. Great information. I think you guys do a phenomenal job. So my comments that I wanna share are gonna be from a resident standpoint rather than from somebody who is inside baseball, right? And so I'm gonna agree with the mayor on a lot of what she just said. So my preference would be for us to focus on a resident-focused delivery, right? So today, How long does it take a resident to get a permit for something very simple? Can they do it online? Can they pay for it online? And will they understand the responses they get from the department? And what I spend a lot of time doing is explaining to residents what it means, what they write, what it means when they answer in the comment section. and how to even use the portal. And so what I would love to see is something that is really simple and friendly for people to understand. Because most people, you know what they want to know? Just tell me what I need to do. Just tell me what you need in order for me to... to get what you need so that I can move forward with whatever the project is. And for some people, if that's changing a toilet and they feel like they need to get a permit for it, that should be, you know, an hour or two hours online and you pay 30 bucks and you're done. I don't know if we need it for a permit for a toilet, but I'm sure we do, right? I'm sure we do. I know. So what I'm getting at is that there's this balance with residents saying, look, I'm not going to waste my time going to get a permit for it. toilet if it takes me 30 days but if I can get one in an hour and pay 15 bucks or whatever the numbers I'm happy to do it right so so all I I agree with the mayor wholeheartedly that if we can get a way to to if we can find a way for us to improve the system to make it really simple and and get a translator almost if we have to hire somebody to translate for residents um what uh what we're conveying back to them sometimes in the comments. And I don't know if this makes sense to all of you, but I'm sure developers, they got this down pat, they understand what's going on, they can figure it out, maybe they don't.

Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.

I personally will put a lot of the comments into AI, like, what are they talking about? And I'll get... Typically a pretty good response that helps me. Oh, now I understand. So the discounts, if we were gonna go with discounts, I would want those to be residents, right? Prioritized with those discounts more than anybody else. So if you're a resident, you live in the city, you're gonna get a discount, but non-residents wouldn't if we can do that. I don't know if that's something that's possible. And... Yeah, that's it. So for me, if we can figure out a way to establish a goal of turning basic simple permits around in a short period of time, I think that would be wonderful, and then translating what we get back. sometimes is very complicated for residents. Now, I will speak from my own experience this year. I put a new roof on my house and it took a long time. I kept having to go back into the portal. It's hard to really figure out how it works and what the process is and what the next step is. And I try to do this from the standpoint of a resident, not a commissioner, right? Because I want to understand their perspective, what they're challenged with and what they're going through. And I think at the end of the day, I think somebody figured out I was a commissioner. So I got a permit pretty quick. 30 days I think was normal time for a re-roof, if I remember correctly. But I just want to share with you that if I wasn't a commissioner, it would have been a very frustrating process with a lot of inside information that was hard to understand. And I know you guys know this already, right? Our system is not super friendly average person out there, the average resident. So thank you. Thank you, Mayor.

I was looking for the email because our clubhouse is being renovated where I live, and I've had to call Stephen multiple times to say, can you explain these notes to me because they were accepted, but there's still notes that they have to approve, and it looks like it's been rejected. We sat down, the president and I there, and I was like, first of all, to get the email, to get the record you have to put in so perfectly exactly the address that shouldn't be that way if i'm putting in my address this should just come up it shouldn't come up with 126 21s you know so i agree with you it's very frustrating but the other thing about the toilet and the ac and the If it's an emergency, we let them do it. And then we circle back and say, Okay, go, you know, and I don't know if people know that or not, because they're probably doing it anyway. But that kind of stuff, air conditioning, toilets, I guess.

Good. Yeah. So those essentially would be emergency permits that they can ratify getting the permit afterwards, but they can do the work and then come back.

Right, which is great. I don't know if people know that, but I agree. And I, you know, listen, the turnaround time has been great, you know, considering where we came from. It was, and I don't know, you know, what the story is comparably in other cities. Like, how much development does Miami Beach have versus, and commercial, versus, you know? So, I mean, every once in a while, and we just went through it, we get an irate email from, That was our fault. In the past, it was our oversight, excuse me, the one from whatever his name was, But in the past, we would get emails until our city manager got hired. I don't know if you know what our history was in Hallandale Beach. That would give you a totally different perspective. That wouldn't have changed your information, but it might have changed your personal perspective. We were getting calls from people, I would say, what, five times a week that they couldn't get their permit. It was lost. They weren't being... It was like every day. It really was. It was every day. It was brutal. And so anything, you know, above and beyond already what we have, I'm so grateful for. But, yeah, I mean, I'm kind of parroting what my colleagues are saying because it is difficult. And up until this week, you know, I can't say I'm the sharpest knife in the drawer. So take that, Mike. You laughed a little too fast at that. No, you laughed way too fast at that. Because it's a good joke? Yeah, all right. Well, you're sweet. But no, I'm being honest when it comes to this kind of permitting language and not the search engine, but just reading that might be something that a lot of people understand the comments and what how close they are. I mean, how clear they are, regardless. So yeah, I don't know how much of that we have to change and how long that takes. But I agree.

The biggest issue, and I know you're dealing with it on a day-to-day basis, but more importantly, our plan reviewers, Phil, all the people in that, it comes back down to the contractors. And I think we need, and I know you don't want to, because I had to back off one. I've been having a call from a contractor, somebody that's trying to move into Gulfstream that's from Vegas. that has no idea about the South Florida building codes, no idea how to do a permit. You know exactly what I'm talking about. It is taking a year. So I finally said, listen, I am over this.

Wait, Mardi Gras or Gulfstream?

No, across the street, Gulfstream. And that's not really the important point of it, but it got to the point, I said, I can't. This is a contractor issue. I was to the point that it's like, I can't say. Your contractor is horrible. And I know you have a professional way to do it, but you don't want to attack a contractor or criticize another professional. But at a certain point, maybe that message needs to be clearer. Anybody walking into filing a permit, like Mike or myself, we need to know. You can file the permit, but you better make sure your contractor knows what they're doing, your engineer knows what you're doing. You still need plans, and that falls on them. They're the professionals. If they're not doing their job, it is going to impact your permit, not our city. And I think that's what gets lost sometimes. And maybe that's a better disclosure that we cover everybody's...

But I think you're absolutely right. You're absolutely right, but one of the things that happens is that the contractors blame the city if the residents don't have easy access to see that, no, it's not a city issue, it's a contractor issue. And so that happens a lot.

The mayor is right, but I'm just saying that if... You two are agreeing with each other a lot today.

Yeah, we're all violently agreeing with each other. It's wonderful. But the point, I think, is exactly right, is that we want to make it so that our residents know where to go to get it resolved. And it's not the city. It's often the contractors. That happens a lot where I'm like, no, you need to go to your contractor. I've had one person who was asking for a roof repair, and they hadn't even applied for the permit yet. And they were blaming the city. The contractor was blaming the city. I'm like, they haven't even applied for it yet. So how are we supposed to? I can't help you, right? Anyway.

Yeah, that's a big issue. That's one of the main ones. Not on your end, on the contractor's end, but I mean, even with the clubhouse, initially, they started, the people that live there were coming to me and saying, what's wrong with the city? And I was like, what are you talking about? And they said, you know, we're not getting a permit. And I said, well, who's saying it's us? And the president of the association to get them to back off was telling them it was us that was holding it up. And then I went and I looked. This guy hadn't filed half of the paperwork, let alone any engineering. I mean, usually it gets stuck before they even start submitting plans. It's just the basics. you know, asbestos, all of that. And I'm like, you better reconsider your contractor. He hasn't done one thing. So it's a big problem. I don't know how much of that you can coach people through. I don't know how much. We can say it up here all day, but I don't know how easy that is.

I think a written disclosure, for a full disclosure, in red, a card or something, a sign. You're sitting here. Please know. This falls on your contractors and your professionals. We are here to help you or even as a customer service. Hi, I'm Joy Cooper. It's nice to meet you. I'm here to help you. You need to understand you can as a resident do this, but it still falls on your professionals and the permit. So I don't know how you just do it.

I think we have $4.5 million to solve the problem.

I know. Well, that's even training. Well, that's training across the board. But education, advertisement. We could use a couple, maybe double down on advertising. I shouldn't call it a problem.

It's to make it better. Okay, go ahead, Dr. Rowe. You guys do a great job. There you go. Yeah, go ahead.

I think I don't have, are you good?

I just want to ask City Manager, I'm assuming that they can ask for whatever it is they need, and it's not just us saying this is what we need, but if they need to change something, they can come to you also. and say, this is what we need, we need to improve it, whether it's money or whatever the case is. So, just saying. I want to make sure that door's open for that, you know, whatever it is. Amen.

Go ahead. You're on deck. Thank you for your patience.

No, no, no, this is actually a very good discussion. So I think what's happened is that we are, in a sense, the victims of our success. Commissioner, sorry, Vice Mayor Lazaro, you said it very well. There was a point in time approximately six years ago when there were complaints to every commissioner all day, every day about a myriad of issues. And the building department was one of those big issues that you all were getting complaints about every single day. And so one of the things that we did, because think about what your problem is today. Your problem today is that you have millions of dollars that you need to spend. But why do you have millions of dollars that you need to spend? You have that money because approximately five years ago, we implemented something that no one else in the country was doing. We have a hybrid model in which we have a partial building department, but we also have employees. Most cities will have one or the other. And we did that as a stopgap measure because we were having trouble hiring. You all remember we were going through building officials, all those wonderful things. And in fact, Vice Mayor, actually, I remember you actually came and sat with our building team for a day to kind of see the back of house operations. And so we struggled through those initial years with this new hybrid, and it was a risk. The hybrid that we did, it was unproven anywhere. And we didn't have the money. We were definitely not flush with cash. And now because of how we've managed our system, we are now forced to have to find a way to spend millions of dollars. And when I say now, our team has spent so much money on technology. We have bought the biggest monitors. We've iPads for everyone. We've bought new software. We've given everyone, we can't really use them, but we bought body-worn cameras. We have tried to put money, We have not spared one expense with this particular.

You have enough scanning printers and printing scanners, backup printing printers.

We have scanners, we have it all. We have literally done all of that. Our problem is that now, what are some of the challenges that come with that? still hiring we still have a turnover with our permit tax so while we want to do all of the expedited permit in the expert in fact what what's our i haven't asked you but what's our vacancy now for our permit tax for permit tax uh we have one left right now we have one left and so we're constantly having to try to fill these positions and so what happens is yes we have talked about because vanessa will tell you years ago we want expedited permitting we want this we want that So whenever we believe we're at the point at which we can do these things, then someone leaves. We need money? How do we keep them? We've increased salaries. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, we're very competitive and we've done the work actually. Would you guys agree? Our team has really been working very, very hard at this. Tonight, or should I say today before you is a hybrid model of what we want to try to do to spend some of this money down.

Sorry, go ahead. Is there a hybrid as far as remote? Work that we could tackle, get more people that may be wanting to work from home or do some type of hybrid system. Maybe you have permit, you know, these permit people that are supposed to be permit runners that I think sometimes we can do a better job than them. No disrespect if you're listening. But maybe there is a different model to look at to search for additional people that can do remote work.

So we will continue to look at- Just food for thought. No, I hear you. And that gets into other issues, union issues and other issues. But we are looking at, we continue to look at various ways. to spend this money down. We're gonna look at training over the next year or so. And so hopefully before the end of this fiscal year, because I know we legally have to do so, we will bring you back some options that hopefully will be based on what we're gonna show you, what we've shown you tonight, in terms of our two methods, the pilot program on page seven, and the...

We have the pilot program. We also talked about the deferral program and obviously spending the funds.

So those will offer immediate discounts on our permit fees. So in other words, by combining these programs, we can give immediate discounts on our permit fees We call it a pilot program just because it allows us to see what happens.

And then we don't have to adopt it. It won't change our fees.

It doesn't change the fees, but they exactly.

Because once we loan, we can't go back.

What if we did something like the mayor suggested and we hire a permit runner, a company to interface between the residents and our building department on permits? Could we not?

We do have the business assistance coordinator. That person is assigned specific projects. Whenever I have a case where they need some hand-holding, she would also be assisting that person as well. So that's how that position is being held.

But Commissioner Butler is actually saying, and the mayor was suggesting, that perhaps we look for a company that we can bring on board that could bring more human capital to help with our permits in terms of ombudsman type stuff. We can look into that.

Even more promotional, like maybe our clerks were like, I don't... Maybe they were good and they knew their job, but they get burned out from dealing with irate people on the front counter. I mean, that's not an easy job. It's not that any job's easy, but particularly sitting there all day, and they're very pleasant. They're all night, but at a certain point, maybe instead of losing good ones, maybe promote them to do something like that.

I don't know. I'm micromanaging now.

I'm micromanaging now. I'm sorry. These are good suggestions.

I'm sorry. With the training, we've thrown customer service training at our folks as well, and we will continue to, as I said, we'll continue to explore some of these other options. Now, what I was going to say was, When I was in Fort Lauderdale, we had the same issue. This is not unique. Now, they have a bigger issue because Fort Lauderdale had some of the highest building department funds in the state. So per the law, they would have to give back tens of millions of dollars, to be quite honest with you. As I said, we're going to work our way through it. We're going to find mechanisms to...

Can we? I'm just like spitball now. I know everybody works. We have, say, and not everybody just works five, four days a week. If we bonus pay and pay our staff to come in and take training, we have the extra money.

Yeah, I think that the, I think that the staff is, and I give you credit, Dr. Earle, that, I mean, we have filled 50 more positions than we normally have. So from a staff standpoint, we've done a, I think the city has done a fantastic job at hiring and retaining talent. And that's, to me, the definition of success. having people leave happens. I mean, it's gonna continue to happen. We're just gonna have to get used to having people, the turnover is normal. I would be curious to be what the percentage is relative to previous years, but turnover happens. So I don't know how we can, we're doing, I think that you've implemented a lot of, this came up at our last meeting recently when we talked about some of the additional things we did to encourage employees to come to Hallandale. We've made it pretty nice, I hope.

I do want to add that, you know, with the CM's directive, staff is required to get certifications. We do pay for the certifications. We do pay them overtime so that they can come over, you know, after hours or on Fridays so that they can take the classes. We pay for the classes and exams. Thank you. Building has its own customer service training in addition to the city's training and other things that we, whatever we do find that's necessary and that comes up, we don't spare the expenses on that.

Okay. All right. We're good. Hybrid discount. Focus on residents, more training, more technology, whatever you need the money on, right? Spend it.

So we will bring you back, before the clerk yells at me. So we'll bring you back the options as a form. City Attorney. Will that be a resolution or is that an ordinance that would, like how would that work in terms of the options that we have?

For the sake of expediency, I would recommend, so for example, if you're gonna do a pilot program, you'd bring back a resolution with the pilot program, like what the criteria, recommended criteria is gonna be, what the program, that way they can just, if they want to amend it, they can do it at the moment, but they can also just pass whatever they agree upon at that moment. We don't have to come back again on it. If you're gonna do, for example, fee reductions or whatever, that would come in the course of the reso booklet that's gonna happen before, I'm sorry, the fee booklet that's gonna happen before a year's end. If you're gonna do a deferral program, you'd bring back that program specifically for a resolution for that.

So if we're going to use both the discount and the deferral, two separate resolutions?

Yes, it would be like its own program tied to this, yes.

And that would need to come before the end of this fiscal year, per law, so.

I do want to add so that we have all full context. With the House Bill 803, there was also a requirement for us to adjust our fees for private providers. Typically, the projects that use private providers are those large projects that bring in a lot of funds. So it's 50% for plan reviews, 25% discount for inspections. So you will be seeing that as part of the fee booklet as an amendment, and this is so that we can be...

maybe that's a better discount for a lot of our bigger developers. That's a nice, sweeter, private providers.

Is that a decrease?

No, but if we discount it, if we discount it, if we discount it, or say we're gonna discount the fee, To use, I don't know. Just be creative. See whatever legally we can do to sweeten the pot. Because then that takes a lot of the pressure off the internal staff to focus on residents and that scenario. Right?

No? Yeah.

So we have three meetings to bring you all, three meetings to bring you guys back something. So we will work very hard to bring you the number of resolutions that we need to try and get this thing kicked off. Vanessa?

Great. So I do need to have direction from you of which level of the fee discount you would want to see us move forward with so that our consultant can continue with his assessment of our fees and propose the final document.

It's page eight.

I just put it all away.

What would your recommendation be? You don't want to share a recommendation.

See, I would do hybrid that, too, going back to commissioners, like a flat fee for a residential or something. I don't know what you do.

Can we start with the least aggressive to see if we can use the funds for some of the other things that we do?

I would recommend the most aggressive. Really? Yes, and I don't want to go too deep into why, but I definitely think you have over $5.5 million that you need to... could theoretically not be carried over. So I don't want to elaborate on that. You can each call me later and I will happily discuss it with you only because it's very technical and in depth and all that. But I would recommend in the more aggressive realm of the, you can always adjust them again if you're starting to see a problem with your expenditures versus your revenues. But yes.

We do have to monitor it. So Commissioner Butler had also brought up whether or not there could be a discount for residents versus others. We could look at it in that way and come back with the program where maybe it's the 25, which is the middle for commercial properties or larger projects. And then for residential, it's the 35. That way we do provide relief for those single family residents that are trying to come and get permits from the city.

Or maybe we just do, like a year you get a free residential permit, come on in.

You have to have some fee, but you could do 50% off or something.

It was like really bold. I mean, people have done bold things in cities. How aggressive can you get? Like maybe we can just say you have to file it and register it.

You can do any kind of discount program you want to. That's kind of the hope of what you would do with these funds is that you would discount the fees. So A, you want to set your fees so you're not continuing to generate an overage over expenses moving forward because you don't want to compound your problem. but then B, if you have, and I think that's kind of what they were talking about, the pilot program, is that like different types of, that's exactly kind of what they were talking about, which is a program where they would have discounts for certain types of permits for certain types of people. They'll bring you, but that's kind of exactly, the mayor kind of said kind of what the type of thing they were thinking.

Wait a minute.

That is legally.

We've done already, because we've been through code enforcement. We've done, what is it called when you say, okay, the amnesty program? Amnesty. Maybe that's what we do. How much revenue do we generate from resident? That would be the number, though. Maybe we do a year, a basic $100 fee to register permit for residential.

We haven't done a study to see what it's residential versus commercial. You understand what I'm saying?

And say, guess what? We're going to do an amnesty. Are you thinking about doing your roof? maybe it'll get it done. It'll help people with code enforcement issues and it could be a broader impact than not just discounting that person, but we could get people maybe to address their code enforcement better and that kind, I don't know. You understand what I'm saying? I don't know the percentage, but instead of doing an amnesty, do a residential.

I think we'd have to come back, study that out to understand, but in the meantime, I think we need to do the pilot program because time is of the essence.

Well, I'm not going to do 35%.

And it doesn't preclude you all from making a, but at least it gets us, it gets us to where we need to start to do something immediately and it does that. So whatever number this commission.

15. We have our consultant there. And no disrespect to our attorney. I know you want to keep us out of the woods but if we get in trouble they're gonna have to give it anyway.

So the question is can we do the most aggressive where we do the percentage so it's higher for the residential and lower for and get you back to that 35% net number, right? There you go, that's good.

If I understand, this chart is different from the pilot program. This chart is setting the rates moving forward. Am I understanding this correctly? No. No. This is the discount you're trying to achieve through the pilot program. Okay, thank you for that clarification. I was mistaken. Okay.

I think that might be fine. That would be so cool. So seeing if you can bring it back that way. Yeah, does that make sense?

So bringing it back.

So if you can get your number to be the most aggressive number per the city attorney's recommendation, but make it so that it leans toward the residents and not, so maybe the residents are 50% and Non-residents are 15%.

Let me ask the elephant in the room question. She's nervous about it. What happened to Fort Lauderdale? Did they come in? Was it scraped by the feds or by the state?

No, I haven't checked them for a few years. So we're being very cautious. The attorney said we shouldn't talk about this. I know.

This is not something we should continue to discuss. So what's next on the agenda? This has been great. Okay.

Just to be clear, so the discount pilot program, most aggressive as much as we can, but it would hire discounts for residents.

Okay. Okay. Higher discount for residents and really looking at some kind of amnesty program for building permits. I didn't get a permit. I did something.

I want a permit for what I did.

An amnesty permit, but even get work done. If you're in code enforcement, you can't afford the construction costs or a fortune. It could take a couple thousand dollars off somebody being able to do their work. It's a lot of money. Okay. I don't want to leave that on the table. Okay. I think we're good. You guys did a great job. Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much.

Thank you, sweetie. It's always fun when we have extra money, right?

Thank you. Madam Mayor, commissioners, thank you very much.

Thank you very much. It was a pleasure listening to your presentation.

Thank you. Have a nice afternoon.

Okay. Commissioner Annual Action Plan presentation. Here we go. And away we go.

Director Mazzei.

Good afternoon. Natasha Mazzei, Program and Budget Monitoring Director.

Good afternoon, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and Commissioners.

Today we're bringing back the Commission Annual Action Plan for FY27. This item was previously presented on June 22nd, and today's discussion is intended to confirm the proposed priorities, review what is funded and unfunded, and receive Commission feedback before the plan returns for adoption in September. Today's presentation is organized into four parts, background and current situation, a review of the proposed plan, a summary of the funded and unfunded priorities, and of course, commission feedback. With background, the city commission adopted the strategic plan on June 26th, 2024. The 2026 commission annual action plan was later adopted on September 15th, 2025 last year. The annual action plan serves as the annual bridge between the strategic plan and the budget. It takes the longer term goals in the strategic plan and translates them into priorities that can be funded, assigned, implemented, and tracked during the fiscal year. Go on slide four. This slide shows how the action plan works. It starts with commission direction, which sets the top priorities for the fiscal year. Those priorities are then aligned with the budget, including available funding sources and planning amounts. From there, departments convert the priorities into work plans with implementation, ownership and milestones. The priorities are organized around the strategic plan focus areas, which are fiscal stability, resident services, public safety, infrastructure and mobility, and economic development and affordable housing. This slide summarizes the proposed funding priorities for FY27. These are items that currently have an identified funding source or are included in the proposed funding plan. The list includes economic development and affordable housing, wayfinding and gateway signs, Diana Drive roadway improvements, Joe Scavo Park perimeter fencing, the Northeast section drainage infrastructure design, road and sidewalk improvement program, and so forth. The key point is that these priorities have been connected to a funding source, whether that's the general fund, stormwater, cemetery, three islands, utility, or bond funding. Slide six, this slide identifies proposed priorities that are not fully funded at this time. These items remain important, but additional direction is needed on timing, phasing, and funding strategy. The unfunded or partially funded items include the North Beach Facility, Mooring Fields, Shaves Lake, City Electric Vehicle Facility, and Golden Isles Underground. Some items have partial funding identified. For example, Mooring Fields has $453,000 funded. Shaves Lake has 10.5 million funded with an estimated 14.5 million needed. Golden Isles Underground is estimated at approximately 7.87 million unfunded. And there is an exhibit. I think you all have this exhibit.

Golden Isles is not our money.

Golden Isles is different money. It's different money.

No, it's so hard when you put those in with everything else.

The funding source is TBD, so that's not identified as general fund dollars. But this list is the priorities for the commission. This list is to determine the priorities. So we're looking for feedback on whether these priorities should remain on the list and how they should be sequenced for future funding discussions. Okay.

So this came out of the discussions that we had previously where members of this commission indicated that they would like to take another stab at this list and perhaps reduce some of these items to reprioritize what will be this commission's top priorities moving forward.

Sorry. When we had our workshop and we had a figure on the mooring field, I was going to talk about this under other, but I'll do it really quickly. I had an opportunity, the Governor DeSantis' appointment on the state board for the intercoastal waterway and the marine areas here introduced himself to me. I met him on the trip to Israel. He came in and we spent a day with... Assistant City Manager Woods, Chief Michael, our extraordinary captain and staff, we went and did a tour of the intercoastal waterway. And after evaluation and what had transpired in Hollywood, that was an exorbitant amount of money. We can do it for a lot less. the mooring field remember it was like listed at millions of dollars um so i i don't want to pull it off at this point but to do it it wouldn't what what it was is we don't need to dredge all the maybe somebody can but maybe if i if i could can i just ask so we just uh put the uh money out for the

the limited anchoring area. Isn't that our first step to determine whether we need to move toward a mooring facility? So let's see what kind of results we get out of the limited anchoring area, the ALA, I think it's called.

A lot of the project.

So can we not... can we postpone the mooring facility as an item? We don't need to do anything on it for a year until we determine whether the limited anchoring area helps.

Who wanna tackle that? A lot of the stuff that we have to do for the limited, I can't explain it as eloquently as you do.

No, the signs are being installed.

No, but a lot of the studies, we still have to do studies. We do have to do seagrass studies. So a lot of that stuff.

Is that boring or for the limited anchoring?

Limited anchoring.

We've already, I thought we were already, the signs are being installed, aren't they? We already, what is it, 68 grand that you, under your...

I don't know. We can move on to the next one, but I was going to talk about it only because it was so eye-opening.

Let's circle back to it.

And the cost, but it shouldn't be pulled off. There's a reason why. Go ahead. And he was very helpful. He's going to help us with grants and help us with different opportunities. So I'd hate to pull it off.

Well, I don't want to pull it off either. I'm just saying that the problem that we have is that we're trying to solve is a problem with boats sinking in Golden Isles Lake. And the limited anchoring area is the first step that we need to.

But you don't have to do like a whole bunch of boats. You could do like 10-acring, and it'll make it even better. So, okay.

Yeah, I agree. We've taken one step in the right direction.

Here comes the guru. I'm sorry. I'm kind of tired today. Oh, you eloquently, I was trying to explain, we went on our tour, we met, and I'm gonna blank on his name now, but we went around and I was trying to explain that a lot of the stuff that we're doing for the limited area, those studies and that impact, that can be rolled into the mooring field and the cost and some of the things that we found out about that project, it's not like $2 million, but you could probably eloquently explain it better because you're more in the weeds with it than me.

Commissioner Butler was also asking about which comes first. So we know the ALA was first for a reason. So can you explain what the mayor is asking, but also just kind of tell us why the ALA is first, where we are in that process, and what comes next?

So the ALA limited anchoring area, that comes first because that's essentially our short-term plan to address the vessels in the waterway. What that does is essentially it allows us to enforce our code as to the time that the vessels are allowed to be in the area. Now, the reason that that comes first, and it can only be first, they cannot be together, both cannot exist at the same time, There hasn't been a municipality that has done that transition from one to the other. They either have one or the other. So we are the first to try to figure it out.

So imagine the procurement process with the companies to get this done.

Now the acreage limitation area, what we're doing now is we have to put the sign markers so that we can fully enforce our code with the time limitation. Once that is done, we do need to figure out what that transition will be to the mooring field. But in the meantime, we do need to get permitting for all of it. And to answer the mayor's question, for the markers, because it is in the waterway, we have to get permits from the state. And they may require for us to do some surveys, whether it's seagrass survey, et cetera. And those surveys can only be done within a certain timeframe. Seagrass, for example, is between June and September. So there's a very short time. That project has kicked off. We've sent them over to our PO and trying to get that survey done with the ALA vendor so that we can use that survey to kick off the mooring field. So it piggybacks, you understand what I'm saying?

Yeah, I'm with you, but what I was saying is do we need to go to the mooring facility if the ALA solves the problem?

It depends on what it is that you want to do. With the mooring field, then essentially you have a program that has to be operated where you essentially rent out your spaces for the vessels. The mooring buoys. Correct.

And that means we have to. put showers and laundry facilities part of the tour that they looked at what we did close enough to be called to qualify whether our size to be marina but my point is yeah maybe we do need to you're right maybe we do but let's hope that the ALA solves the problem which is having boats that are I mean the calls that I'm getting are people are running their generators 24-7 They're using the water for their waste because they're not moving the boats, and they're sinking. The boats are literally sinking in the water, and we're stuck with it. So will the ALA help us to control that? Maybe, maybe not. If it doesn't, then yeah, we do need to figure out how we fund... the mooring facility and whether we can make that transition, I guess, is another question.

With that said, that gives me a pause and a question because we are planning to bring the mooring field contract to commission in September. I'm still reviewing proposals right now to see which is the best company, et cetera.

I hope you're... picking his brain about certain things that he said.

Well, you guys come back to us and tell us if the ALA isn't a solution to that issue that I just described, then yeah, we do want you to come back with that mooring. And if what you're bringing back is setting the foundation that will allow us, if we need to turn that switch, then let's do it.

Unless we try out the ALA.

So let me ask you, I was going to say that. So maybe we try out the ALA for a year, assess, evaluate, and then come back and you will, because we'll learn. You learn, and there's no, I mean, it's not.

Well, it takes time, too, and any grant, it was said, you can do multi-year grant applications. Ooh, that's a great idea. Yeah, it was like a long, this was like a two-hour adventure that I'm trying to summarize, and I didn't want to get too much in the weeds. We can talk, I'll tell you the whole story about driving around if you want to know, but it was kind of very eye-opening, and it totally changed my whole thought about it.

So if the commission, so based on that discussion, we can postpone the more infield item for a year. We assess, bring something back to the commission next budget. after we've assessed and given you guys some data, and then you all can make decisions.

I don't, again, but as long as it's still on this list and that it's not.

So it's gonna be on, okay, so.

I would put limited Anchorage slash Mooringfield. So it's, if we decide not to do the Mooringfield. I think that'll just be confusing. And in my mind, I think the mooring field is going to solve a litany of issues. Just because you have limited, people just come in and put down whatever they want, and then you have to enforce it to get them out of there, right?

Yeah. So the only thing is that if we're reducing the list, then it would mean that I also remove the dollars associated with that item. Because we're going to postpone it for the next...

Microphone.

Sorry.

That's what I'm saying. I'm a little concerned.

It's not gonna kill our budget. So we have the ALA, which we are putting funds to, right? We have dollars associated with that.

Correct, yeah.

We have the Morin field on here. What this is, is this is our directive from the commission to also pursue the Morin field at this time for the next fiscal year. What we're saying is that let us see what the ALA does for the next year and then bring something back to the commission That speaks to, yes, we now want to proceed with the more, you all, it's your money.

I think we're saying the same thing, but I would add this to the list because we pull something off the list and anybody seeing it is like, well, what are we doing? Are we just getting rid of it?

Those funds for this year could be allocated to one of the other items that's on here. Potentially, yes. Potentially, yes. But I think the big thing, I don't want to take away any momentum or any, if there's something with the mooring field that we say it's going to be another year and somebody says, well, then you'll drop down and it'll be five years or something, then I don't know, maybe we, we move forward with some of that money and not all of it. But I agree with you, I think we need a year to find out and somebody's gotta come back and tell us whether ALA is doing anything to help resolve the situation. And I don't know how it functionally will work. Are we gonna go in and check on boats on a weekly basis and see how long they've been there?

So Marine enforcement will have to increase with either program?

Either one, we have to do more Marines. Hey, how you doing, Chief Michael? So that'll be an enforcement issue that we'll have to really work on for next year.

But it was really, I was ready to kill the whole thing. So we'll add a section.

We'll drop this to the bottom of that new section just as a tickler that this is something we talk about next budget. Yeah, I don't want to get the wrong impression that we're not doing it and that's a decision. We will pursue grants and Noemie and Joanne will pursue grants. So that will now drop. So okay, so one item.

And I'm excited to see the signs go up, the ALA signs too.

Wait a minute. I want to set expectations on that. We have to get permits and that process takes months.

It'll still take.

All right. So it's not immediately that you'll see the changes.

Well, thank you.

Which is another reason why because we're still not done with the ALA process. So that will take months by itself.

and not to muddy the waters excuse the pun um we are you know he talked robustly about getting like help to remove these boats and get rid of the sunken vehicles do we have money budgeted to do that if we do not have any dollar amounts for it that's broward county isn't it no it's our lake No, we don't, and that's the next question, I'm sorry.

So Chief Michael, so typically we don't try and touch these things, because once we touch them, they belong to us, and then we have to store them and do all of those things.

But we're not solving a problem, and that's wonderful, but we're not solving the problem. But there's a state fund. Well, we ought to apply for it.

And the state, yes, the state, Chief Michael, do you want to?

Can we, yeah, because that's what I want to set expectations for, because people are, first of all, it's a hazard. There's more things on the lake that I should have taken the, sorry. I'll share the video for you, but it is growing. Our lake is growing with junk.

Chief, how does that work?

And floating rafts, and it's gotten worse, in my opinion.

So the way it does work, Chief Michael, sorry. Good evening. Good evening. Afternoon. Afternoon. So the way that it works is we do not touch the vessels as the city manager just identified, because the moment that we actually put our hands on it, we now take ownership to include, even if it was drifting, If we were to re-anchor that, if we were to try to put our hands on it and try to make sure that it's safe, then they'll say that we're the ones that actually did not do it correctly and therefore they will come after the city. So we do not touch the vessel unless it actually lands on property. Normally by that time, the residents are actually tying it down. And I got to tell you, what a difficult time that is. So normally, if we have a vessel that is sinking, we contact FWC. They have the ability to do that. They are the ones that will sticker the vessel, and they go through state grant funding in order to be able to remove it. But it is a very lengthy, as we've all seen, a very lengthy process to get done. As far as the city is concerned, we do not have the dollars to do that. And I don't know if you want to get involved in that. If you guys remember, many years ago, there was a vessel that sunk on somebody's property. It was in Golden Isles. And we actually put our hands on... We helped the owner... Lift it up out of the water. And before you knew it, now it was an eyesore because of what it looks like. And we couldn't find the registered owner. It was the previous owner we got. We took that vessel. We brought that vessel on land, put it in our Anson lot back when we had that. And we dealt with that vessel for probably four years. trying to get them to agree to it, get somebody to sign it, before we finally got rid of that vessel. So for the city to get into the business, very difficult. That's why we use our federal partners, and they've actually done a very good job so far. It's just a very lengthy job.

What can I do to help expedite that?

I wish I had that answer. I will not lie to you. I do not know what we could do internally.

All right. But we're in the process. They've been notified. They tagged it because the tag was on it from them. So it's in the process.

Yes, ma'am.

So I can be a squeaky wheel. Okay. Thank you.

Yes, ma'am.

But Owen, what about the other junk?

there was like floating rafts and all that other unmarked crap that so we have growing with generators and all we have been well with generators that's on a vessel one of the things that we do is we go out there we make sure that they're actually registered believe it or not they are registered and they actually meet compliance they put on uh navigation lights like their anchoring lights are actually on if not we cite them we actually send the citation directly to the registered owner and we have been doing that for quite some time. As far as debris that may be out there, so DPW does have a vessel that they go out there and pick up debris, and so have we, in fact.

Debris, good, okay. You answered my question.

We pick up some vessels that the manager probably would not care for us to do to get rid of that problem, so we have to take care of it. Thank you.

So can we can we also from and I don't know if this is possible within code so the other complaint that I've gotten and I'm glad you brought up the generators is noise complaints of people running them all night long and that noise travels on the water. It's really bad. So I don't know, can we set times that they're allowed to generate or use the generator, or is that a code for noise complaints if they're running the generators at 3, 4 in the morning?

If I'm not mistaken, we already have an ordinance that does address that after a certain hour.

Okay.

I'm curious. I've never seen it on the water. It's more on land.

Yeah.

So we can go back and review it, but I think it would apply the same way. You're absolutely right. Noise travels on the water, absolutely.

Yeah, let's see if we can, I don't know how we would do that, but I'll certainly tell residents to put it into my Hallandale app, but maybe if we have a way of when that happens, I don't know how we would do that at two or three in the morning.

And there, you know, where there's that will, there's a way with these crazy people. Apparently, there was a group congregating on Gold Niles Drive. One of the moms called me because obviously school's getting ready and they don't wanna be congregating around this whole group. That one, even my husband said, why don't you just get rid of that bench next to that bridge and get rid of anything that's comfortable there. But I think we use that as kind of a bus stop too for people, whatever. But they must be waiting and that ability to have something come in and out is lending itself to having these crazy, yeah, they're doing like frigging tender or whatever.

Yeah, and that's not, they're not supposed to be able to do that. That's not a.

No, but if they do it and jump in and jump out and they're not tying on anymore and they're not trespassing, it's like you have to cut them in the act.

We've addressed that quite strictly for quite some time. We have not had them on the bridge anymore.

No, but they're congregating there to be transferred out. That's a different story. Oh, God. I'm sorry. Thanks, Chief. Go ahead. I have others, but go ahead, Commissioner. Oh, okay.

So I know North Beach Facility is on there. So thank you very much. Thank you.

Thank you, Vanessa.

So I saw the recent update from you, Dr. Earl, about the changes that we have coming for North Beach Facility. So what kind of funding do we need in order to – I mean, I see North Beach Facility as being a park asset, right? It's part of our beach. It's been underutilized or completely unutilized. I know South Beach Snack Bar now, I don't know where we stand on that. But I lump all this stuff together. I mean, from a resident perspective, not as a commissioner perspective, I'm really disappointed that we still don't have a snack bar, we still don't have anything going on with our North Beach facility, and these, I think, are assets that have been empty for far too long. So I would like to keep this on here. I'd just like to figure out a way, maybe we move some of those mooring field funds over to North Beach. I don't know what money is required.

I think there's, we had this conversation when you hung up.

Okay.

So maybe city manager should weigh in if you don't mind. Sorry, ma'am.

I'm worried, I'm reading, but it's, yeah.

So.

Is it okay or is it premature to say?

No, no, it's not. So a few months ago, or maybe a month ago, or time flies, I sent the commission an email indicating that we were going to hold off on the RFP until we concluded some of the negotiation that we had with Azumi. That's on tonight's agenda. So we finally now, if the commission approves it, we'll have an agreement that's probably our strongest agreement with them ever, it's very much in our favor. And those parking spaces are gonna be a huge asset for us that we now have all of those spaces. At the, I think it's the 22nd of this month, we are gonna have MindBodySocial. So now, okay, so the other thing that I told the commission about six weeks ago, two months ago, was that there was an issue with the elevator. we had to do an emergency fix of the elevator. We didn't have to do the emergency fix of the elevator and it was not just a normal fix, it was actually a very serious fix. And now we're gonna come back and do a major fix of the elevator because the facility, it just has not been maintained, right? Now we're gonna overhaul that. However, because we have the temporary fix of the elevator, it's safe. We are going to now activate that whole space. So we're going to, at the end of, I think it's the 22nd of this month, our team, Faith, Rachel, Kathy, are working on bringing MindBodySocial. We're going to have yoga. We're going to have whole day, not whole day sessions, but we're going to have half day sessions pretty much of the rooftop and activate the space on the ground floor. We've begun to... we've begun to address the sound system issues in the facility, because now we're also going to have September 4th, the monthly events that you all wanted for the facility. So we're going to have, um, so far sound, which you all approved, we're going to have artists that now are going to come out beginning on September 4th, um, on a Friday night, we're going to do that monthly. So between the, the activation of the wellness events in the space, the activation of the music events in the space, that now will begin to do that for the North City Beach Facility. We've also begun initial discussions with, and I don't wanna go too deep into it, with, so our contract, as you know, the one that you approved tonight, is really with related group, not with ETRU, ETRU is a sub, related, based on this contract that we have tonight, has expressed very strong interest, I would say, Kathy, in taking over the entire space for North City Beach, working with us with a new agreement for that space to do some great things with that space. So that's gonna be the next step. I asked them to let the commission approve tonight, so that we know we have a contract for them to perform all the things that we want them to perform. Then we will come back with an amended agreement that does the extra additional things that you were talking about with activating the whole space And they have the resources to do that. I don't want to go into detail. So short story, we are activating the space this month in two and a half weeks. We're going to have events on the top floor, yoga starting at 6.30 or 7 in the morning, other events in the spaces below. We're going to have music events coming in. So that's how we've begun to activate the space. Obviously, you all have been attending the South City Beach space. So now we're going to do one overall program. That addresses the music and entertainment at South City Beach, and I'll do the same thing at the North City Beach starting this month.

Good. And I know that is part of our lead-up to our anniversary right next year, so I'm excited about that. I think, obviously, if we... If we get to have as part of our anniversary a grand opening of a facility that's been closed for 20 years, that would be great. So I'm excited about it.

I will say one of the things... You'll be there for the yoga at 6.30?

Yeah, I'm not a yoga guy. I need it, but I'm not.

I think it's 7.30, not 6.30.

Okay, so early morning.

But I will say that one of the things... So if you guys know... downtown Fort Lauderdale, they do a jazz brunch on the first Sunday of every month, and they've been doing it for as long as I've lived here, I think, and you know you can count on it, and it'd be nice if Hallandale could get, you know, one of the things I think that we said eight years ago was we had a ton of activities, and we weren't really known for any of them, and they were not very well attended, and so if we can get into some kind of a rhythm that people can start to count on, I know I can go to Hallandale for yoga at 7.30 on Sundays and go to the South Beach for music on whatever Sunday. I think that makes a lot of sense for people to know to count on it, right, in the future. And that would be great for us to be known for that. If that's the direction that we want to go, I mean, that may help us move into the 250th.

It's 100% the direction. You all were very clear that you wanted both of those parks activated. And I think, you know, we've started to do that at South City Beach, North City Beach, the contract, and quite frankly, you know, they wanted to delay the contract signing by a month, because I was hoping to have had this done in June. So we were delayed a little bit, but it's all good. I think we're going to get to that point. We're now going to outfit the space. Our very illustrious IT director is working on putting a sound system in the North City Beach facility, because when we have our musicians, we're now going to have proper sound system from the top, from the rooftop, all the way down through the facility as well, We're going to be buying furniture for it and everything else because no matter what we do, even if we enter into a new agreement with related, Beachwalk slash Beach Club, you know, even if we do that, for them to do what they have said they would like to do is still going to take months and months and months and months, right? So in the meantime, our plan is to furnish that space, do what you've said, have monthly events that we are known for, and really just turn that facility into a destination of our own. And then when the next group comes and you sign an agreement with them, then they can take over.

has he asked um commissioner butler asked a question do we have the funding and the budget i had talked to dr earl that we need to do some banners around our other parks advertising possibly even doing the airplane banner like before the event i will say our friends went online and they took the shuttle from Gulfstream right so going to your point the more we do it and they find out about it I think it will catch but I think you know it's great to do social media but again going back to a long story you have to do everything it's like any campaign you know make the phone calls make the internet do the mailings do whatever you need to do but I think we need to advertise a little bit better. So the answer, do you have funding for budget for that or do you need us to make any kind of motion tonight to make sure you have funding for it, sir?

Yes, so I think Commissioner Butler had mentioned we could use some of these dollars for what we need to do with the furniture, with the furnishings and with all of those things. Yeah, additional money and also the marketing. Additional dollars will absolutely help Commissioner Butler. So if out of, and this is really next year anyway, right? Because this is really, well, no, no, no. No, October. So right. It's October. Yep. Well, no, this is actually already in.

Yeah, the 453 is already in.

So if you allocate, let's just say 250 of this to the North City Beach facility, then we can, in this 26 budget, then we can do that.

I cannot do that right now. Can I? It's a special meeting. Can I entertain a motion?

I can't. Remind.

She'll remind us. Remind us. Okay.

Go ahead. As a year-end budget amendment.

Yeah. And then, so I know the city electric vehicle facility is on here. So I do have a question. So we have $3 million funded.

For the facility.

What are we short? That's a lot of money, $3 million. Okay. But why? What are we building?

We're building a metal. So the $3 million that you see is really $3.6 million that we need. That is for the horizontal. So if you've been to the DPW facility, you know the western half of the facility is kind of... We have the newly paved area, Commissioner Butler, where we had the buses, then we have the other area that's kind of rock slash some asphalt slash stuff. It's that whole area that now needs to have the bus parking, the bus facility on that space. We have the $3.6 million for all of the horizontal. The horizontal means all the site works, so the roads, the curbs. What we're missing is the drainage, all of those things. What we're missing is the approximate, I think the last number JT was around five million, approximately.

Additional.

Additional is what we need.

So it's $8 million.

Yes.

And there's not a way for us to do this without, I mean, that's a lot of money. I mean, you know, people build, you know, luxury homes for half that money.

And some of these were the part of the expectation that FDOT had when they gave us, how much did they give us? Two point something? Right. Well, in total, that was it. I thought they gave us more. Not for the facility, but for the... Almost four. Yeah, so... Their intention when they gave us all of those dollars which helped to pay for our buses and everything else was that we were going to have a facility. So the facility that we have is really a big metal building. There's no Taj Mahal here. It's basically like an aircraft hangar. I've seen them, yeah. Right. So that's what we actually need the money for. When we were doing the initial designs, we got the cost estimates from the... from the CMAR, the construction manager at risk, that was over 12, almost $13 million, and we said, no way. So that's why we went back to the drawing board, basically redesigned the building to make it cheaper, and that's why we now need $5 million for the building itself.

Is there a way to redesign the, or build it in a way that we can do it kind of in a modular fashion. So we do a little bit over 10 years. So I don't, you know, start off, maybe we don't need to pave it. Maybe we start off with, you know, a gravel lot, right? Put the building on it, do a gravel lot. And then we come back later at some point and,

So what you have is you have the bus, you have the chargers, you have all the infrastructure. You have all the basic infrastructure that those buses absolutely need. So at the very least, you would need to do all the horizontal roadway work. When we try to redesign the building itself, as I said, you know, the entire project was almost $13 million. We came back down to a metal building, which is really what we wanted in the beginning, and we were told in the beginning that that was not going to work. Well, lo and behold, it does work. What we need is the ability to now fix our buses. So what we're missing is where the buses, you know, the bus bays can go in, they can go up, you can fix them and all of those things. That's really what this building is. And then we have some offices as well. So it's a fully functional building as of today. We don't have, you know, our buses are new. We don't have any place to actually maintain our buses. And that's what this facility is. I'm sorry. So to answer your question, Commissioner Butler, like the phase-in would be a bit challenging because we know that we actually have the need. I think our buses are around two years old. roughly two years old now, so they're still new and knock on wood, but we know we need a facility that will help to manage that as well. Sorry.

Is there any partners that we could look to that are other bus agencies that need facilities to do this type of repair work in partnership to sublease out?

You mean for, oh, in terms of using, helping us with our facilities, what you're asking?

Right, and we could do a shared use or something with it?

So the other challenge with the shared use is that now you still are on the DPW facility.

Oh, security.

You're still on, and that facility is still guided by federal guidelines because it's a water treatment. There's some additional... things that you have there that you would not necessarily have in other places.

I would just ask if we could look at ways to phase that horizontal. I mean, obviously, we've been using it for two years without all that. Not that it's ideal. I'm not talking about perfect here. I know that's what we want.

Oh, no, we just... So there are other considerations. So when you have the bus, you have the tires, you have all of those things. If those tires are not on the proper... Like right now, they're on unpavement. When they're on the other side, if we phase it, you're now on gravel, which will affect your tires a lot differently. So in other words, your maintenance... It's not an unreasonable suggestion. Don't get me wrong. I'm thinking through how we phase it. And that's why, by the way, we broke it up into two phases. So... The reason why we broke it into two phases was because it allowed us to be able to find the five million that we need for the facility, hopefully in a period of time in which our buses are still working good enough that we don't need to put them on a lift immediately, right? So we broke the project. It was really one project. We actually broke it up into two so we could handle the phase that we know we had the money for, which is the chargers, the roadway, those basic elements. The necessities. Right. And then we would then work with staff, the commission, to find the other $5 million for the rest of the facility. So it's actually, in a sense, Commissioner Butler, we did exactly what you said. We actually broke it up, handled one piece first. And by the way, that will come before you all for approval again, just from a site plan perspective. And then phase two is the vertical design, which is actually, we are doing those designs as we speak again, and again, that will come before the commission again for approval.

I guess it's having these two items next to each other I think is somewhat interesting, right? The city electric vehicle facility you're saying is $8 million. the Golden Isles undergrounding is $8 million. To me, there is a ton more work in the Golden Isles undergrounding for $8 million than paving a parking lot and putting a metal

That's locked in contract. It would have been a lot more.

So all my point is, it just seems like there is a huge amount of money for what we're saying we're getting, right? Something, it doesn't really match up very well.

It's also drainage. So I'll give you an example.

I know about the drainage, yeah.

So the drainage part of that, of the DPW facility, is an extraordinarily important part of that facility. So I'll give you an example. Just for us to... Just for us to do the FEC parking lot was going to be $5 million because of drainage and everything else. Just that, the one that exists north of Third Street was $5 million, and that was drainage and us milling, surfacing, and redoing the asphalt. In the DPW facility, we have very serious drainage issues, so that drainage will connect to the other drainage plans that we have. And then we have all of the EV infrastructure as well that we need for the buses. So you'll recall that probably six weeks ago, we had a lightning strike and we had to now buy emergency equipment. So we have all the batteries, we have all of those things as well that are a part of this cost for this facility.

I understand it just to kind of still, it still seems like $8 million for a metal and drainage versus $8 million for undergrounding electrical you know, and redoing the entire entrance way and a street. I would ask for us to go figure out if there's a way for us to try to address that. So I know it'll come back. The only other item that I think we needed to talk about is the street lights for public safety that has been identified as missing. So it's not on our So I wanted to bring it up there because I know we've had the conversation, we've had residents that have brought it up. Those are the street lights in Three Islands on Diplomat Parkway and on Atlantic Shores.

It's that area.

Yeah, it includes Three Islands. I mean, some of the lights are in Three Islands. Some are on Diplomat Parkway. Yeah.

I'm confused. I would think the ones that are in Three Islands are going to be taken care of with our assessment.

I don't know if they are or not.

Hopefully. You mean missing lights or just there's no lights?

There's no street lights. On Diplomat Parkway and on Atlantic?

Well, you have single family homes, then you have Shell Bay.

So what else? You have 200 buildings, 400, 600, whatever buildings.

And their lots aren't lit by light? It's not lit up there?

From what I understand, and DPW sent an analysis of where there were streetlights. So maybe we can bring it back.

I'd bring it back because I don't know.

Agenda item with some specifics.

I think in a list of priorities, I'm like thinking. I don't know if they're. I don't know if they're parking. Because you have the section, the commercial section, then you have Shell Bay, you have the hotel, then they're doing all the construction on the other side, and then you maybe have, what, 20 houses?

Why don't we bring it back so you'll have the backup? Yeah, because I'm...

Okay. All right.

So let's bring that back.

We're asking for that, but on the level of priorities, I'm like, no. Okay.

Well, it's a public safety issue, and that's the only reason why I bring it up.

Well... That could be a citywide issue, but I don't think we're gonna add a citywide lighting project, are we? This year? Are we good? I know, talking about hot issues and what's happening with flooding, I'm glad to see that we're having this design put in place for Northeast. It's in the design phase, and I'm gonna ask again, why a scale of this project, if there's any way that this can be morphed into having a P3 since we have our stormwater drainage fund setting up and to try to expedite this project. I'm glad we're doing something, but again, the one in Northeast, we're just doing design this year for a half a million dollars.

For flooding?

For flooding, for design. The other question I had, and I knew this had happened near District 8, where we had the dip in the road that gets flooded. We have two hotspots, three hotspots that have been driving me, everybody crazy for the past couple years. And I know Jeff's aware of it, and the new director, I'm sure she seems pretty quick on her feet, is up to date on it as well. The one cut through road on 4th, Northeast 4th, it constantly gets flooded. Church Street gets flooded constantly. And I'm continuing, continuing, and I haven't reached out. I know we've gotten complaints continually from one of the residents there. I'm gonna reach out to a long-standing resident there to see if it always did that originally but is there any way that we can Prioritize some spot projects to address these concerns I mean, I know we have a broader scope going on but to me going back to the frustration of probably beautification and public realm those areas that it To me, they're always flooded, the incident range, and the range that sits there. I don't know how to address it, and I didn't get a chance to talk to a head of time doctor all about it. But, you know, going to the priorities, traffic, flooding, beautification. So, the three areas, like even fourth, I don't know, director, acting director of whatever town is familiar, it's the segment between 12th and 14th, and it's right on 14th, it is always flooded there. And I've been talking about that project for over like three years, trying to figure out what we're doing to fix that project, or fix that roadway.

Well, from four streets. It's right near your, yeah. The cut through, those cut through, yeah, the cut through. The water doesn't hit the drains. They're in the middle. Thank you.

So this last weekend, they had a pump out there.

Yeah, it's, that, that. So that's why I said, like, how can we lift up the ground to move the water? What can we do with that? Because they're not hitting the four drains.

yeah now it's over in three i mean that's a totally redo and i know it is but i needed to bring i want to bring it up because again going back to like let's keep focused on the top three priorities those couple hot spots we might want to reconsider looking at some types of projects there and i don't know how you realign anything else or I know how busy everything is, but I don't know how my colleagues feel about it. We worked on Third Street for District Eight. I think we owe it to our residents to focus on these.

about the tax assessment. Can you repeat which area you're talking about?

There's an area between 14th and 12th that is perpetually flooding, always. It's been that way. Everybody's been out there. I still can't even figure out why the drain is capped off on 14th avenue and blocked off so that gets all the water piles up there and i'm just thinking that like people see that and that's what like oh we're not doing anything about it for three years and everybody's complaining about it that area church street is always flooded the minute it rains, and it stands there. And the harder area is the one between Diplomat and Atlantic. That, for some reason, and I think it's since they've done construction, that area's continually getting flooded as well. So I don't know on what point in time that we make a direction to say guess what, we know we have a whole list of projects, at what point do we get those projects addressed while we're waiting for these longer term projects?

that are gonna, you know, take, well, I'm sure if there was something that could have been done for 14th and 12th, it would have been done. I know, because that is exactly the area that I have been having a conversation with, with Chabad, I have been doing this for six months with the city manager, if there was, we put the pump in and 12th and second, if there was a way to solve that, I mean, I miss what Commissioner Adams said, because she lives on the street.

But I don't understand, you know, since there is a commissioner on the street, why they're calling me every minute.

But no, seriously, because they're not getting the answer that they want. And no matter what I have said, we're wrong and we're not doing enough and we're not right. So when you say something like that in the commission meeting, Mayor, I have to call you out on it because no, it's OK. Because, no, no, no, this was yesterday. I said the same thing. You were like, well, we could be doing more. Please don't say that because we have been telling them that there is nothing more that can be done than what we have already been doing, which means the six-page document that the city manager and DPW sent out listing all that DPW has done. I don't mean to be rude, but I need to say it on the record because they're going to come here They've already told me, we're coming. We're going to come to the commission meeting because they need a more professional person. I'm not enough.

I'm sorry you're being rude to you. People are rude to me, too.

It's not that. It's that no matter what answer I provided, it was not enough other than literally putting a pump on every street which we can't even if we where we're going to put the water but the bottom line is i don't want to suggest that we need to do something in that area city manager if i'm out of line please tell me please okay because i i really have i mean really have gotten to a point where

unless i know i'm not talking about again i started with that pumping station and i've been saying it for the past two years of how we can expedite some of these flooding projects we have a million and one projects my concern also was the hot spot between 12th and 14th it's been ongoing 14th and 12th and what seventh fourth It's fourth.

How can Commissioner Adams be living on that street and not have a problem? I do. I said there's four drains, but the water sits in the middle.

That's a hot spot. It doesn't get to the drains. I'm just trying to figure out how we can address that.

So why have you not been advocating to stop that? Why are they calling me?

I've asked the city manager about that.

Okay, but obviously that wasn't enough because they have been calling me and saying that you didn't tell them anything and that's why they're calling me. So if you have been seeing that on your street, why haven't you been more engaged in this problem instead of them calling me and yelling at me for... Six months.

They call me all the time. They didn't call me.

Is there a solution though to, can we regrade the driveway, the roadway so that the water does flow into the driveway?

I'm asking Dr. Earle, okay. Jeremy's heard the conversation. I know it's not something that's going to be a couple hundred dollars, $100,000, or it could be. I just don't, because that becomes a major area for traffic. I'm not talking about the whole area. I do have concerns about the northeast and that we're designing it, then we're designing it, then we're going out to bid, then we have to construct it. to me if that can be a project that can be a p3 and say guess what we're going to do it we have a revenue stream get it done just get it done already instead of delaying and delaying for another five years who's delaying these i'm not saying it just again we only have a certain amount of project managers and projects that we are we already have on the table That's what I've been hearing and I'm sure everybody else has heard it. My other major concern is that cut through road, Church Road and other area in Diplomat that continually stays flooded to the left. You can't get a car through. That to me is a concern.

I'm aware of what flooding is. I was walking in it up to my knee. I get it, but that hasn't happened since 2022. no 2020 about just recently no i'm explaining to you i'm talking about the floods that go into the homes that is the most concern above everything that is really what i care about i'm not interested in i think we're on the same page no but you're okay city manager i need you to weigh in on 12th avenue and 14th please please If you don't mind. I mean, you don't have to do it with the tone in which I am doing it, which is why I'm asking you to do it, because I am.

You're not listening to me. You're frustrated with me.

I'm just agreeing with you. You're not agreeing with me. You're suggesting that there's something that can be done when we have explained every reason why something can't be done. They cannot be done. And if it can be done, somebody's head is going to be on the chopping block.

It's not prioritized. Is it a priority?

Is it a priority? Manager, could you please?

Yes, Vice Mayor. So the item that you see for the northeast drainage, addresses all of that, and that's why we need to get that done. When we fixed the pump station on 2nd and 12th, that caused all of the water in that area, and it surprised us, to go down almost immediately. So what we then said was, and even with 4th and 12th and... That's okay. So even with 4th and 12th, the water goes down faster because of the things that we have done. That's just a fact. That's just a fact. In this design that you have here on your Commission Annual Action Plan, what we're doing now is we're tying piping into those pump stations that we have fixed, as well as trying to tie that also into our pump stations on 14th. And that's on every one of those streets that are perpendicular to 10th and 12th and 14th, right? And that will address a lot of that flooding in the short term. So let me tell you what the long-term plan was.

Let me ask you a question. Why is it not being done as a design bill? We're doing the design. Then we have to go out. Then we have to go out for an RFP. Then we have to hire a contractor. That is the root of my question. We have so many projects already, and that's why it's taking the length it is.

Director Lewis.

So why is that? Can't that just be a standalone project rather than having it? We did the other pump stations as standalone projects.

By the way, I'm listening. By the way, find a solution. I don't mean to say to you, how dare you say, you know, my frustration is that I have been looking for that. Nobody said to me, well, we can do it this way if the commission gives us direction. Because if that were the solution, then we would be doing that, I'm assuming. But it doesn't sound like there is.

Take some of this stuff off somebody's plate and hire somebody to do it.

So look, so here's the reality. The reality is we're doing over 50, almost 60 projects right now citywide. That's the reality. But the reality is that we are still dealing with all of our flooding issues at the same time. The reality is the commission has approved tranche one, tranche two. Tranche three deals primarily with stormwater, but even though tranche three deals with stormwater, we're still doing stormwater right now in every single thing that we are doing. And that is citywide. That is literally citywide. So I don't want there to be an impression that we have not addressed flooding. Now, when someone on 4th or someone on 12th says, hey, my street is flooded, I'm sorry. When you receive four inches of rain in an hour, your street will flood. It will 100% flood in any city that you are in. And if the residents think that we are miracle workers.

I feel like I'm being lectured. I am not disagreeing with you. I'm trying to figure out a way. to expedite a project that is a top priority. And now I'm hearing, well, it's in a third tranche, but we're doing this. I know we're doing maintenance. I know we're cleaning different things. But this is a big project. And nobody's answering my question. We're designing it. Take it off the table of the tranche and make a priority of it to get it done.

Madam Mayor, if it was that easy, we would have done it. You look at our track record over the past six years. Do you think for one moment, no, let me, because this is just designing it. Why don't we, Andrea, can we, can I design build projects?

Yes, sir.

How do they work?

They do not work for this type of project.

And why do they not work?

Because no one will bid that type of project. It's a straight design and then paying for a bid. They will not spend the time.

What about a public-private partnership with one of a major company?

Absolutely not for this type of project. They will not even view us.

For drainage, a huge-scale drainage project?

No, ma'am. They will not. They will not answer our bid.

Even with the new statutes? The new statutes on P3?

There's no money to be there's no money.

There's no money to be made from stormwater management, private partner partnerships require a business opportunity for the venture.

Absolutely will not get to any answers. You have to go the old way of doing business. Do a design, wait for that, and then put it out to bid. And we'll be getting a lot of answers on our bids, as you can tell from our awards lately.

We're not delaying one thing. We're doing everything according to the law, and we're doing everything according to our procurement code. And we are moving as fast as we can on all of these projects.

Commissioner Adams, and there's no way to address the segment that I talked about at all. The one little block segment. Thank you. So no, we're gonna have to wait for design.

It's not, so no, we're in the design phase for the Northeast area that will tie all of these pipes together. That's literally what we're doing, but I cannot.

All right, I heard you, don't have to repeat.

It's literally in design, and once it's designed, it then goes out to... And permitted. And then we, this is, listen.

What's the anticipation for the delivery of construction? Do we have a time frame?

Do you know where we are, JT, or do you have to go back? Because I know all of this has been, in terms of the whole northeast.

Yeah, we're at about 20, 30% design right now.

Okay.

And the other things that we're doing is we're working on a purchase order right now to make sure that we do the, we've done the northeast section. clearing out all the stormwater drains. We did the southwest section. We're also going to do the deep injection wells next. We're working on that right now to get that on board before fiscal year 26 is over. So that will help us do the maintenance on the deep injection wells. It will also allow us to clean them at the same time. And in the last rainstorm that we did last week, we actually, with DSD's help, pinpointed every single section that was reported in by either police, DSD, or Public Works. We highlighted those on a map. Any of those areas, we're going to then go back to see if there's anything that might have either clogged in the system, has not working properly, if there's a construction project, for instance, that might have put felt on the drainage structures, anticipating that, and it was a freak rainstorm, we didn't know it was coming. I've got to pull the felt out of those, which there was three over in that area. So we continue to look at all of those. And I will tell you this, one of the things that the city manager tells us every meeting we work with them is keep those projects moving, make sure that the design contractor is doing his thing. let it stall one second, manage the contract, and also he has instructed DPW to look at sections where we might be able to put in just some drop-in drainage like we did in the southwest section. We did several sections there. Thank you. So we are looking at some of those small areas that won't interfere with the northeast, and don't waste the money if we're going to address it there, but if it's not addressed in the northeast section, there are other areas that we're working on to try to drop a couple of pipes in, and those will be done probably by our staff at DPW if it's small enough in order to do that.

And we've done that throughout the Southwest area. So let me back up and just say one more thing. So in the Northeast, the plan before six years ago was for us to have $21 million for Northeast drainage. $21 million six years ago was a pipe dream. No pun intended. It would not have happened. And so what we did was when we realized that by fixing the pump station on 2nd and 12th and how quickly all the water went down in that entire area, that's when the plan happened, the plan was created, that we now will tie in as much as we can to that pump station, drain the other streets as well, right? And then tie that into the Northeast 14th and then I asked them, I want you to also construct new injection wells so that we can pump water deeper, and I also want you to re-permit the existing wells that we have. So we went from a $21 million pipe dream to where I can spend a few million dollars faster than telling a resident, I will fix your problem 15 to 20 years from now. I can now tell a resident, I will fix your problem in the next four years. But I have to design. No, just from a policy making, correct, no one wants to hear that.

It's the first time I'm hearing that they're looking at doing some drop chains.

But this is the minutia of the day-to-day operations, and one of the things I have said to the commission, for the Southwest, Charles Casimir, I give him credit, he and his team, this is what prompted it for the Southwest when we had all the flooding issues, is when FPNL had a trench, and we dropped a pipe into that trench and all of a sudden us dropping a pipe into their existing trench allowed us to drain a street faster. We then said, okay, what did I say to you guys? I want that done throughout the entire Southwest area and wherever else in the city that we can go in and drop a pipe. So again, we are trying to do it quick, faster, quicker where we can. when it's a larger project with injection wells and tines, and by the way, one more thing. A lot of the flooding that the residents experience on 10th and it's F DOT, it's F DOT's water, that is coming off of Hallandale Beach Boulevard onto those streets. And when the mayor and I met with, who was the secretary two years ago, mayor? Steve. Right, when we met with him two years ago, he says, oh, by the way, whatever drainage project that we had planned to do in the next couple of years, we're now gonna push it off beyond 2030. We don't control Hallandale Beach Boulevard and the drainage on Hallandale Beach Boulevard. But that is where a significant amount of the water on those streets is coming from. It is, 100%.

One more thing is that the CM has instructed finance and DPW to go after as many appropriations and or grants associated with the northeast section in particular to help offset these costs and we've been pretty successful. and we're gonna continue. We have another grant application going in for that as well. So, yeah. Not really.

Not really. Not really.

But it is goal of ours to try to attract as much of that help in order to save their user rates as well.

Yeah, she's in queue. Go ahead. You're good.

Go ahead, Mike.

Well, thank you. Thank you for that. And I'm glad I'm hearing drop drains that we did it in the Southwest. Hopefully in those hot spots, we'll get that done. And yes, people are going to flood. If they moved here five years ago, they moved to a beach community that is right at sea level. It is going to rain and flood. It's rained and flood for 100 years here.

Well, no, because when I try to explain to them what a 100-year rain event is and what a 1,000-year rain event is, I'm just talking, they don't want to hear. It's climate change. Stop telling us it's climate change. The bottom line is we know the situation and we're Here's the other problem. When you give people a very detailed explanation, like the six pages or however many pages of details, they look at that because they don't understand and they go, all you did was clean our drains. That's the takeaway. They're not engineers. They don't wanna listen. Their philosophy is that all this development is coming into the drains. That's what I was told. All the oasis, all of that is what's going into the drains and keeping the drainage from happening. So the bottom line is no matter what you will say, and especially if you would say four years, But no matter what you would say, it's not going to be the right answer. You tell them everything that Jeremy just said and the CM just said. Joy, I'll have them call you.

No, and I don't mind answering it. But I'm now frustrated myself after a couple years. So that should be the priority. And I'm glad we're talking about other things. But thank you. Thank you for listening. And nobody else is in queue? Anybody else? Yeah, I was. Oh, go ahead.

A flood that we had a couple of years ago, the restoration people were running around the neighborhood making waves. Now I get flooded every time a major rain comes, I get in my front patio, I get into my back. I've been working for months in my backyard with stones and plants to change the water design so it does not come into my house. It cost me a lot of money, almost $10,000 just to do the back. In my front patio, I got permanent flood tape on there, except for the door where you can come in and out. So I've been working on my own house. But I actually called Chief Michael and said, there's a restoration car running around the neighborhood making waves. Now, if they did not do that, we might not have gotten the damage that we did. And the next day after that storm, I bought a 55-gallon vacuum to suck up the water. And we sucked up the water in the front and the back. And it filled it up. Filled it up twice.

It's going to happen.

I'm with the community. I explained this to them. But I'm working on that too. And I did call Mr. Earl and say, there's four drains on 4th Street. The water sits in the middle. What can we do? How can we bring this street up to move the water? So I did ask.

Listen, I get it. And I apologize for that. And they might have been telling me, They might be disingenuous when they said we asked and she told us there's nothing we can do because they're looking for an answer that they're not getting. The problem is also big government should pay for everything. You have spent money to fix your problem and not waited for the city. There's people that can be doing things, but they don't want to spend the money, they don't want to do it, they want us to fix it. so nobody wants to take responsibility for where the house is the lowest point of broward county um and i agree with you on the on the wakes that is a problem however this last fast rain event we had it dropped a lot of rain pretty quickly I'm under the impression because the chief was driving around and I started driving around. It went down pretty fast, okay? This time, I got to tell you, because every time it rains, I have a coronary. Seriously, I go in, I take, because I'm being told I have no compassion, and I don't know what I'm talking about. That's what came out of this five-month conversation. You don't know, you're not smart enough, and you have no compassion. And that's when I said, you know what? I'm done. Good luck. Find someone else to work with. i have a coronary every time it rains i start calling the city manager going oh my god is people out of the drains clean you know because i know but i have to tell you he was when i said we haven't had that kind of a flood or that kind of a damage and since we've worked on the drain since we fixed the pump we haven't had 25 inches in 25 minutes that nobody can fix but everybody's underwater but The thing is that we want to guarantee that that's never going to happen again. I'm like, nobody's guaranteeing, but I will tell you, hollywood had a news story after this last rain they had a segment in hollywood that wasn't a lot of rain that got dropped if you ever drive through hollywood not that that makes us you know exonerates us but if you ever drive through hollywood after it rains but no one wants to hear this stuff and we've invested money we have worked city manager has had a plan i mean he's done far past expectations that I would ever think with this issue. But when you send them a story and you say, listen, we used to be in the news too. We were also getting stories. We're not getting them anymore. Thank God. People don't, you know, listen, I'm not going to have a heart attack anymore when it rains. I gave. I'm done.

Well, it's sad when a restoration company purposely damages people's homes. to have an income. And that's the sad part. And for them to damage those 22 homes a couple years ago is very upsetting.

Okie doke. So I appreciate the conversation. Thank you for the update. I'm glad we're doing a design.

except for the mooring fields that we're going to move. It's going to be dropped down. 50 to North Beach facility.

It's fine.

Go ahead. I'm sorry. Go ahead.

We're good? Okay. We're good. I think we're good and we can take a break because that's what we got, right? Nothing else has changed, at least for the time being. We're taking a recess.

Yeah.

One moment. I'm going to have to leave for an hour and come back.

Yeah.

Did you need to say something?

I'm just letting you know I'm going to have to leave and come back.

Okay.

I have to leave and come back. I'm doing it. Yeah.

No, I have no one to let them out.